


Aches Like Nothing

by izanyas



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Developing Relationships Of Many Natures, Established Sexual Relationship, Gender Dysphoria, M/M, Mutual Pining, Trans Character, Trans Mpreg, Trans Orihara Izaya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:21:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7807009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izanyas/pseuds/izanyas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In all twenty-four years of his life, Izaya has never considered having children. If it's not the concept of bearing them going against everything he is then it's the knowledge that he doesn't actively want them—and first-hand experience that passivity only leads to disaster.</p><p>But then Izaya does something unusual; he takes a chance. He reconsiders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Duele Como Nada](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12220026) by [KarasuShiro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KarasuShiro/pseuds/KarasuShiro)



> I've been talking about writing this for so long it feels like this has been a WIP for months instead of weeks.
> 
> Here goes the most cliché pregnancy story I could bring myself to give birth to (haha). It's trans mpreg, just to clarify, which means that Izaya is a transgender man.
> 
> Bunch of warnings for this one. On top of the ones I tagged above: sort of unhealthy reasons to have a baby (YMMV), discussion of abortion (no shaming), some scares due to a difficult pregnancy (no child death), and very mild transphobia (mostly discussions of it). Also, dysfunctional relationships basically everywhere. I still hope you enjoy reading.

**Aches Like Nothing  
Part I**

_sixth_

Namie noticed almost immediately, of course.

Izaya was never one of those they called well-endowed; his breasts were small, easily disguised under bras a size too tight and rendered to flatness when he bothered with a binder. He was fairly sure most people, even those who spent time around him, would not have made out the lack of any that day. But Namie was vicious, the soul of a stalker in the body of a criminal, so she did.

"Getting a little sloppy?" she remarked wryly. Her nose turned up in disgust as she leered at him, an expression not unlike those she made around him either way. Izaya often told her it was a waste of a perfect face. She often told him to shove it.

"Maybe," he replied. He grabbed the file he had prepared for her on his desk and handed it over, and all the while his face stayed impassive, as smooth as he could make it even with unfamiliar pain flowering in his chest with every move he made.

He _had_ tried putting on a binder that day. It had hurt so much he almost passed out from it.

 

* * *

 

It took her another two days to bring it up. Izaya had stopped trying to bind after the second attempt, had stood in the early morning darkness of his room in silence and stared at the soft sports bra in his hands with something akin to offense. Two days in a row weren't enough to make him panic. He had suffered more at the hands of others, and for a longer time. Bruises happened on him sometimes days after the hits, pains made themselves known for no reason other than his brutal exertion of his own body after days spent hunched over computer screens—but this was different. This made no sense. Anxiety wasn't panic, but it burned slow and crushing at the hollow of his stomach.

Namie said, "You haven't asked me to buy pads for a while," with suspicion as clear on her lips as glee.

Anxiety stopped and made way to panic.

"I'm not pregnant," he told her. He wasn't.

She made a small, dismissive noise. "No one is until the test says otherwise."

" _I'm not_."

"You do defend yourself harshly for someone who couldn't _possibly_ be," she mocked airily. "Starting to feel scared? Did you have too much fun in the sack and forget the basics of not being an idiot? Here, I'll tell you." She stepped closer, leaned over the side of his chair in a mimicry of a confession. "It's called condoms."

For a second Izaya felt the need to grab her by the neck, to spit in her face the words he could feel bubbling up his throat. She looked at him in expectant delight, hands braced to parry blows and grab a pen to stab him with if need be. Izaya breathed in. His chest ached with it.

"I did use condoms," he said slowly. Not that she needed to know about any of this. She made a face, as expected, and pulled away from him.

"I guess this is just karma, then," she said. "Or are congratulations in order? Who's the da-"

He slammed a hand on the table, used the pain and momentum of it to crush the trembling in his fingers and push himself to his feet. "You're dismissed for today, Namie-san. Do enjoy stalking your brother and staying a virgin for the rest of your life."

"Pathetic," she commented uncaringly. "You think you can hurt me with this?"

He smiled at her. "At least _my_ obsession reciprocates in kind."

 

* * *

 

Izaya couldn't be pregnant because he had bled three weeks ago, and because the last time he had let Shizuo fuck him was three weeks before that.

It was that simple.

With Namie gone he was free to lounge on his bed with his phone in hand and browse through medical forums. The results he found spanned from period pains to breast cancer, though, and none explained the suddenness of the pain or matched the causes he could have found around himself. It was hard to bring himself to call his doctor and harder still to dress for the appointment. Every intake of breath pushed against tight fabric, made hurt flare over his skin bright and overwhelming, made an otherwise tolerable nuisance into something all-encompassing.

It made him sluggish. It made him tense. It brought back to life the memories of wrongness he had so long overcome.

When he stepped out into the cold March wind, those memories didn't feel as dead anymore.

Izaya's doctor was one he had picked at random five years ago. She was a tall, severe-looking woman with pristine nails and a perpetual frown wrinkling her forehead. She greeted him that day with a curt nod, told him to strip and lay on the examination table without so much as a _How are you?_ , and when her cold hands touched him it was with tough indifference.

She stayed unfazed by his winces throughout. When she pressed on his areolae Izaya flinched backwards, but the only caring she showed was through an immediate lightening of contact.

"You said this started a few days ago?" she asked. Her hands left his skin. Izaya sat up on the table and spoke over the awful tightness in his belly.

"Yes. Out of nowhere."

"There are no lumps, and no other visible alteration to your breast tissues." She stepped away from him as he reached to put his clothes back on, but she didn't sit at her desk; instead she leaned on it and crossed her arms in front her before asking, "Have you considered the possibility that you might be pregnant?"

Izaya felt himself choke on his heartbeat. "I'm not pregnant," he said.

She looked at him in silence for a moment.

"Well," and she stood up to rummage through the metal cabinet at her left, "I'm going to take a blood sample anyway. I'll ask the lab to go through routine tests and contact you in a few days when I get the results back."

He paid her in cash when she was done, the bills absent the softness of handling—he had drawn them from a bank on his way to her office. She grabbed them without a word.

"This could just be because of your—habit," she said tastefully as he opened the door to leave. "You should stop wearing these things until I get the results back." _You should stop wearing these things at all_ , was what she meant.

"Thank you, doctor," Izaya replied without turning back.

It wasn't yet night when he exited the building. Light still whitened the sky where the sun had dwindled to spare rays over the cityscape, and no stars shone yet for the barrage of bright streets and windows polluting his vision. Izaya walked briskly along the limits of Toshima, his hand a fist around the phone in his pocket.

It might have been the heavy awareness he was stuck in at the moment that made him pick up on the distant sound of metal hitting pavement, that made his hair rise in answer to the growl of Shizuo's voice at the other end of the street.

"I'm leaving," he called harshly before Shizuo could step any closer. Shizuo blinked slowly. With one hand brushing against a pole on the side of the street and his face caught between irritation and surprise he looked out of time, a frame in the progress to violence that no one was supposed to witness. It made cold sweat gather at the back of Izaya's neck and something unfurl in his stomach, warm and angry for lack of a better emotion to hang on to.

"Good," Shizuo said. His hand fell back by his side slowly. "Stay out of Ikebukuro."

"We're not even _in_ Ikebukuro," Izaya replied in annoyance. "What are you doing here?"

"Work," the man grunted. "Gotta follow them all the way to their hideouts now. Pisses me off."

"What doesn't," Izaya said under his breath.

For a long while they stared at each other. Inevitably, Shizuo's face hardened with darker and more violent feeling; he looked as uncomfortable with the changing pace of their interactions as Izaya was, and though Izaya still felt instinctive reluctance to admit that he related to that man in any way, he couldn't help but feel his own discomfort tint itself with sympathy. It was simpler when they could still lose themselves to the abandon of the chase.

But now, two years after Izaya had first experienced the crushing hold of Shizuo's arms around him in something less than hatred and so much more than anger—it felt wrong. It felt like willingly blinding himself or cutting off his own lifeline.

"Whatever," Shizuo declared. He looked at Izaya again, blinked slowly in suspicion and reluctance alike. He stepped forward; but Izaya didn't move, didn't know that he could enter this other sort of dance with him today, and it must have bled into his face or the tension in his limbs, because Shizuo stopped.

"Okay," Shizuo said. "I'll just—" he put his hands in his pockets, and then took them out again. "I have to go back to it."

"You do that," Izaya gritted out.

Shizuo nodded. "See you whenever."

He left Izaya feeling hollow, sucked out of all his substance on the sidewalk as if he had just come out of a fight instead of avoided one.

 

* * *

 

The woman called three days later.

 _"I have your test results,"_ she said evenly over the phone. _"Congratulations."_

He must've known, he thought faintly as she detailed her availabilities for their next appointment. He must've had that answer in him long before Namie suggested it; since the day the pain started, since the weak bleeding a few weeks prior, or maybe while still lying down in bed with sweat cooling over his body and warmth between his legs and Shizuo's hand absently stroking his neck.

 

* * *

 

_seventh_

Izaya allowed himself a full day to avoid considering his options before he grabbed his phone and typed in Shinra's number from memory. He needn't have. It was stored inside the device, inside every one of his devices, but he did it before he could help himself, with the faint hope of having made a mistake and ending up on a stranger's line. He would have an excuse to distract himself then.

But it was Shinra who answered lightly at the other end, _"I haven't heard from you for a while! What do you want?"_ as chipper as Izaya's mood was somber, and the contrast was enough to drag the last of Izaya's sluggish stupor out of him.

"Shinra. There's no way you'd perform on abortion on me, right?"

He was rewarded with the near-unprecedented sound of Shinra's voice failing to the weight of genuine surprise.

 _"No,"_ he replied after a while. _"No way."_

Izaya rubbed his forehead slowly. "I kind of expected that."

He waited for Shinra to jab at him for it; sat tense in his revolving chair with his mind already shaping a taunt to Shinra's voice for him; but Shinra only sighed at the other end, and Izaya heard the scrap of a chair against wooden floor, faint in the background.

Shinra made a small noise as he sat down. _"Not my area of expertise,"_ he said without a hint of softness to his words. _"I probably could if I wanted to and had the right equipment around, but I don't have it, and I don't want to."_ And then, after a second: _"How far along are you?"_

"Seven weeks."

Izaya heard Shinra hum thoughtfully over the receiver.

 _"Not that you need me to tell you that,"_ he offered, _"but you largely have the means to go around the jurisdiction about this."_

"You're right," Izaya replied, extending his legs in front of him and pushing lightly with his foot against the corner of his desk. "I don't need you to tell me that."

He waited with caught breath for something, for Shinra to ask, _Then why don't you?_ But Shinra never had it in him to care this much, not about Izaya—not about anyone who wasn't Celty Sturluson.

The silence spread for so long Izaya thought Shinra might hang up out of sheer boredom. His living-room was washed out by the white light of day, the windows big enough to ensure clarity even with clouds outside preventing the sun from pouring in. Izaya turned slowly in his chair.

And then, _"Have you told Shizuo-kun?"_

Izaya's heart beat once, forceful and bruising, almost like a hiccup. "What?"

 _"You should tell him, if you're not going to get an abortion,"_ Shinra explained. As if it was that simple. Izaya didn't think he could've moved even in the leftover motion of his chair, nauseating now rather than soothing. Shinra waited a second, and then chuckled, _"Please, did you really think I didn't know?"_

"You tell me," Izaya breathed at last. "We never see each other, and I haven't told anyone."

 _"Ah, Orihara-kun, you do tend to hold everyone to promises they never made."_ Before Izaya could ask what he meant, Shinra added: _"Shizuo-kun told Celty as soon as you two started sleeping together."_

Izaya's first, skin-deep reaction to this was betrayal so stark it left little room to anger; there was only ache, severed trust like raw blisters around his heart—but Shinra's words caught up to him, and he realized he had never told Shizuo to keep silent. He had only expected him to.

 _"Don't worry, I doubt he's told anyone else,"_ Shinra said with a smile on his voice. _"Even if he did, who would believe him?"_

"You did."

_"Yes. Because I'm messed up enough to realize how messed up you've always been for him."_

"This talk is taking a turn I don't especially like," Izaya groaned, dragging a hand over his face to the feverish burn of his forehead. Shinra laughed softly.

_"Well, anyway. As I said, I'm not interested in terminating your pregnancy—and I'm not interested in becoming your doctor for its duration, before you ask."_

Izaya clutched his phone to the point of pain. He exhaled, then asked, "Can I know why?"

 _"I don't care,"_ Shinra answered simply.

Izaya hadn't bothered preparing arguments for this expected outcome. Still, they flashed through his mind one after the other, a long string of small anxieties Shinra could have alleviated if only he _had_ cared.

He knew what awaited him for the next few months. He knew what healthcare had in store for people like him and he knew he would not stand the small aggressions any more than the big ones, would not manage to undergo them in silence or without repercussions on himself. He remembered his doctor's face and her cold indifferent hands, and if Shinra's would not be any different at least with him Izaya had the certainty of understanding and respect.

But Shinra didn't care. Shinra didn't want to. Fury knotted itself tightly inside Izaya's throat, hot like an open flame, and his heart felt pressurized inside his chest, like light stuck inside a glass box. Like a star collapsing on itself.

"Fuck you, Shinra," Izaya rasped. " _Fuck_ you." His eyes welled up with tears, and he wiped them away with the back of his trembling hand.

 

* * *

 

_ninth_

Izaya wasn't nauseous at all. He had stopped drinking coffee in the morning and taken to tea instead, with a side dish of prenatal vitamins he swallowed mechanically. But so far he hadn't encountered any smell he found especially repulsive, and if the pain in his breasts was still here at least he woke up every morning without a hint of an upset stomach.

"You're _glowing_ ," Namie had told him when she caught him spacing out. "Positively brimming with parental bliss."

"I'd hate to be a distraction," he shot back. "Tell me if you'd rather I fire you."

They both knew he wouldn't.

Sitting in the back seat of Shiki's car, Izaya watched Awakusu's executive light a cigarette, and as the gold-plated lighter closed with a click he felt cold discomfort spread through him.

As the hot acrid smell filled his nostrils he found himself holding his breath, opening his mouth to inhale instead even though it felt worse this way—even though now he could feel the smoke burn down his throat and stick to his tongue unpleasantly. Secondhand smoking was dangerous, Izaya knew it, Izaya didn't _care_ , he had run into bursts of grey smoke to land hits before and sat in this very car with his head filled with it and lay over his bed and his couch and his floor as Shizuo smoked next to him, and—

"Are you all right?" Shiki asked, suspicion on his lips and a heavy frown at his forehead, and Izaya replied, "No," before he could help it.

He breathed again, shakily; the smoke filled his lungs and ran through his veins like fear.

"Could you put out your cigarette, please?" he asked.

Shiki watched him uncomprehendingly for a second. Then he crushed the lit end of his cigarette into the glass ashtray at his side and opened the window to ventilate the inside of the car.

Izaya waited until his heartbeat had returned to something manageable. He took slow breaths of fresh air and ignored the goosebumps riding along the skin of his arms through layers of cloth.

After more than a minute was spent in complete silence, Izaya said, "I'm going to take a break from work soon."

Shiki watched him like a hawk. "This is unexpected."

"Personal obligations," Izaya replied. "It's only for a few months. I'll keep you informed."

"Of course."

Working with Shiki, Izaya reflected, was a pleasure like no other. There was something to be said about a yakuza's sense of discretion.

Shiki dropped him off at the entrance of the sunlit park where he had picked him up earlier. The air was warm with the end of winter, heavy with flowers and early pollen Izaya could feel tickling his nose when he breathed. After he stepped out of the car and stretched his shoulders, Shiki pushed against the door so it wouldn't close completely.

"I was thinking," he started.

He stopped to consider Izaya for a moment, then sighed. "There is one more job I would like you to work on. I wanted to wait a little longer before asking for your services, but…"

"I'm available until I say I'm not," Izaya said with a tight smile. "Shoot, Shiki-san."

"A poor choice of words," Shiki replied with a gruff laugh. He rummaged through the folder by his side and handed it over to Izaya. "Do you have any info on this?"

Izaya did. It was too soon to offer it up for sale, though, and as he eyes raked over the face of a woman he remembered as a child and organizations he had followed from their start to their hazardous growth, he said, "I will, as soon as I can."

Shiki observed him with only the relaxed curve of his mouth to betray his curiosity. In the end he nodded, and said his farewells, and no sooner had he closed the door and window that his sleek black car moved away, glowing in the evening light.

Izaya started walking away slowly. His back ached a little from sitting down for more than an hour, in long slow strokes of hurt from his hips to his thighs. Around him Ikebukuro shone with energy in preparation for nightly activities, and quite a few students were out of uniform already and joining in small groups to head for the livelier parts of town. He let his body relax into the stroll and his mind clear of the day's flow of intelligence both given and found. He almost missed the low call of his name from a side street—but he couldn't have missed Shizuo's shadow emerging from the mouth of the alley, the loose bow around his neck and Tanaka Tom's vaguely surprised face behind him.

"Izaya," Shizuo said again, and Izaya felt his heart in his throat as his eyes zeroed in on Tanaka. Shizuo hesitated before turning to his boss.

Tanaka raised two hands, palms outs in sign of surrender. "Got it. I'll see you tomorrow, Shizuo."

"Yeah," Shizuo replied softly. "Thanks, Tom-san."

"No problem." The man shot Izaya a thoughtful glance as he walked by, but he didn't say anything more, and the tension in Izaya's shoulders dropped with every step he took farther away from them.

He briefly considered making a run for it. One look at the frown on Shizuo's face made him reconsider, though—he didn't seem angry, but he wasn't far from it either.

"Did someone try to punch you?" Izaya asked instead, eyeing the bruise at Shizuo's chin.

"What?" Shizuo brought a hand to his face, and winced. "Oh. Hit me with a crow bar, actually."

"You really are a freak," Izaya chuckled, shaking his head. "To think there are still people in this city who try to best you."

Shizuo frowned, but didn't say anything in answer. He was watching Izaya, scrutinizing him as if he wanted to turn his skin to glass and witness the things inside, and Izaya swallowed painfully, nerves alight with sudden flight response as though his entire skin was being rubbed with sandpaper.

"If that's all," he finally blurted out.

But when he turned on his heels to leave Shizuo grabbed him by the wrist, tight but painless. Izaya's lungs locked up.

"Wait," Shizuo said.

"Not here," he gritted out. A man had already stopped to watch them on the opposite sidewalk. "At least _try_ not make a scene, Shizu-chan."

"You're one to fucking talk." But Shizuo tugged on Izaya's wrists, his grip still painfully gentle, and as he dragged them both back to the alley he had come from his pinky brushed against the heel of Izaya's hand lightly.

He released Izaya once they were in the shadow. Izaya stepped back to lean against the wall and asked, "What do you want, then?"

"Don't look so happy to see me, you asshole," Shizuo growled. Izaya felt his breath catch again, but Shizuo only sighed and rubbed at his forehead before looking at him directly, his face a mix of irritation and _concern_. "You've been avoiding me."

Izaya inhaled harshly. "I can't believe it took you so long to notice. Why yes, Shizu-chan, I've been trying to avoid you for ten years now."

"Are you still fucking going on about this?" Shizuo said, taking a step forward. Izaya pushed harder against the wall. "You know what I'm talking about."

"What kind of relationship do you think we _have_?" Izaya laughed, bright and easy, even as his ribs threatened to shatter under the beat of his heart.

"I don't know, god damn it, _you_ tell me."

Izaya breathed out. "All right," he said. "I'll tell you."

He pushed against the bricks with his palms, walked until his toes could touch Shizuo's and their noses almost bumped when he lifted his head. He brought up a hand, curled it around the rumpled collar of Shizuo's shirt and closed his thumb and index finger around the untied string of his bow. Shizuo's face flushed all at once, skin red and vibrant at his cheeks and ears, and when his mouth relaxed to open, wet and inviting, Izaya tugged off the tie and stepped backwards.

"Not that kind of relationship," he said. He crushed the bowtie in his fist—and the shaking in his fingers with it.

Shizuo closed his mouth, and the sound of his teeth hitting together echoed for a second through the deserted alley. Izaya watched him intently, waited for the curve of his hands to break into the motion of a punch or a grab, and all the while his grin ached on his face and his shoulders thrummed with unspent violence.

But Shizuo straightened up from the slight bow he had taken to kiss. He closed his eyes, and exhaled, and when he talked it was only to say, "You insecure bastard."

Izaya felt blood rush to his head until his vision blurred. He almost stumbled with it, masked the fall as a step back into Shizuo's space and pressed a hand against the pocket at his hip where he could feel the outline of a knife.

"Don't insult me," he said to the dark silhouette of Shizuo's body as his fingers closed around the handle of the flick blade.

"Izaya—"

Izaya swung blindly, and the sharp end of his knife sang through thin air as Shizuo stepped aside to avoid him. He felt more than saw Shizuo's hand close on his arm once more. "Don't _touch_ me—"

" _Izaya_ ," and now there was worry pressing down on Shizuo's voice, and incredulity, and Izaya would have taken second to consider it if not for the dizziness slurring his thoughts into one another—"your nose is bleeding."

 _What?_ Izaya thought. But he could feel it now, liquid warmth above his lips, and when he opened his mouth he could taste metal and salt.

"Are you sick?" the shape with Shizuo's voice asked. "I'm calling Shinra–"

"No," Izaya said.

The hand at his wrist tightened in a spasm. "You're not even steady on your feet."

"I'm fine," Izaya retorted. He made a face when he wiped away the blood with his sleeve—but it came again, an unstoppable stream now dripping from his chin and onto his clothes, and his sight didn't fix itself, and when Shizuo spoke again Izaya didn't hear him under the rush of his own breathing quickening with every second.

 _What is going_ on, he wondered somewhat distantly. There was darkness now at the corners of his sight, and sounds came to him as if muffled by ear plugs.

"I'm," he started, but he didn't know what to say—wouldn't have known how to ask for assistance even if it wasn't presented to him on a silver platter. With a burst of will he tried to rip his hand away from Shizuo's hold, but that turned out to be a mistake; without this support there was nothing to parry the feeling of awareness running away from him or the way black bled into his vision until he couldn't see anything at all.

And then it was only a matter of too many panicked breaths in too little time before he blacked out completely.

 

* * *

 

"… started bleeding out of nowhere."

"You should have brought him to the hospital."

"Shit, Shinra. You don't actually have anything else to do right now, just take care of him, all right?"

There was a brief high-pitched sound, slippers whining against polished floor, and then Shinra's yelp, "I'm saying this for Orihara-kun's sake! He was really mad at me the last time we talked."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

Izaya forced his eyes open through the heavy drum of his headache. His eyesight took a second to adjust out of blur, and for this entire lifetime he couldn't breathe at all for fear of passing out again. Eventually he managed to make out the details of Shinra's living-room, the back of the couch he was lying on and the corner of the glass coffee table, and when he pushed himself upright on shaky arms he finally saw Shinra and Shizuo standing on the other side of his makeshift bed.

"Izaya," Shizuo said immediately, and the relief in his tone felt like an arrow stabbing through Izaya's belly.

"Oh, you're awake already," Shinra commented idly. He fiddled with his glasses, walked around the couch to lean over Izaya. "How do you feel?"

"I thought you didn't care," Izaya tried to snap, but his voice came weak as a whisper. He cleared his throat.

"I don't, but I have a feeling Shizuo-kun does."

Izaya glanced at Shizuo briefly, before turning back to Shinra. "I'm fine. I'll be leaving shortly."

"You were _bleeding_ ," Shizuo interjected with a growl. "You're not _fine_."

Izaya rolled his eyes and said, "It was a _nosebleed_ , Shizu-chan. I'm sure you've had your share of them and experienced yourself how harmless they are."

"You did pass out," Shinra said conversationally. "Could be more than just a nosebleed."

"Which is why I'll tell my actual doctor all about it tomorrow," Izaya said with as much mockery in his voice as he could muster, but Shizuo was speaking over him, uncrossing his arms and frowning pathetically and asking, "Wait, what do you mean?"

Shinra pushed his glasses back up on his nose and replied, "Well, Orihara-kun is underweight even in normal circumstances, but with his current condition it could easily lead to anemia and light-headedness. Add the stress I'm sure he's drowning in right now and you got yourself a good recipe for blackouts."

There was a beat. "What condition?" Shizuo asked, dumbfounded, at the same time as Izaya's heart skipped a beat and he hissed, " _Shinra_ ," with enough strength to betray himself even if the doctor hadn't.

And Shinra smiled and said, "The pregnancy, of course."

Izaya heard none of the silence that followed; his blood beat against his ears so loudly he thought he would go deaf from the volume alone, and his left arm shook once, so weak all of sudden that he near fell back onto the couch from lack of support. Air felt like lead when he breathed in and fire when he breathed out. From the corner of his eyes—resolutely turned to the glint of sunlight still caught onto the smooth surface of the coffee table—he saw Shizuo's hands fall open-palmed at his side, excruciatingly slow.

The sound of broken porcelain brought him back. He jerked his head to the kitchen, only now noticing Celty standing there with a ridiculous frilly apron on and a hand still open around nothing, the cup of tea she had held now lying broken at her feet, its content spilling out to burn over the wooden floor. She fidgeted with her phone for a second. When it dropped too she didn't think to catch it with her shadows—she bent down to pick it up, hands trembling with emotion she didn't have a face to convey.

 _Izaya's pregnant!?_ she held up for them all to see, the elephant in the room written black on yellow in her hands. Shinra said something in assent, and she hesitated again, typing and erasing for a good twenty seconds before deciding on, _With a baby?_

Izaya swallowed the excess saliva in his mouth and wheezed out a breath around the tightness in his chest. He could feel Shizuo's eyes burning the side of his face, the shell of his ear, the hollow of his neck where his skin pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

"Um," Shinra said without much remorse in his voice. "I thought you would've told him already." His eyes flicked to the side where Shizuo stood still as a statue.

"Is it…" Shizuo said. Izaya looked at his hand as it slid into his pocket and then stopped. Shizuo took a shuddering breath. "Is that true?" he asked instead of what he really wanted to know.

So Izaya unstuck his dry tongue from his palate and answered, "Yes, it's yours."

He let himself look then, let his eyes rise up the length of Shizuo's arm to his shoulder to the shattered expression he wore. The raw disbelief on his face, and the guilt, and the wonder, and the beginning of redness over his skin that only made his eyes softer with affection—and then Izaya had to turn away again before he stopped breathing at all. His hands were shaking again.

 _That's wonderful_ , Celty was saying now, waving her phone in his face so fast Izaya barely had time to read at all. _You're going to have a baby!_

"Celty," Shizuo said lowly, but she didn't listen. She turned to Shinra then, flashing another message to his eyes only, to which he replied, "I don't know."

She straightened slightly at his words. Izaya had time to catch her next text before she angled it away from him. _What do you mean you don't know?_

"I'm not Orihara-kun's doctor," Shinra said. "You'd have to ask them instead."

 _Why aren't you?_ Celty asked, outrage written in the line of her shoulders, and Izaya pushed himself to his feet.

"I'm leaving," he announced without looking at anyone. He made it to the mouth of the hallway before Shizuo caught him by the elbow. Izaya let anger ignite in him and pushed back against his hold, discomfort and disgust itching beneath his skin so much Shizuo must've been able to feel it somehow. His grip relaxed until Izaya could free himself.

For a second they looked at each other with matching frowns wrinkling their foreheads and upturning their mouths.

"Can we have a moment?" Shizuo said, turning to look at Celty.

 _Sure_ , she answered. For all that she lacked a head Izaya thought she was looking at him then, maybe staring at his body in search for a still non-existent weight gain, but soon enough she took Shinra by the arm and dragged him to their bedroom. The door closed behind them with a click.

Izaya stared at the corner of Shizuo's chin, still bruised purplish and red from earlier.

"I…"

"Save it," Izaya cut in. Whatever Shizuo wanted to say, he couldn't take it. Not now.

Shizuo grunted unhappily. "Fine. _Fine_. But we have to talk about this eventually." And then, after a shaky inhale, "You. You're."

"I'm pregnant," Izaya replied easily, as if the words hadn't cut themselves out of him for all three times he'd had to say them.

Shizuo flinched as if struck. He was redder now than Izaya had ever seen him, something deeper and more meaningful than embarrassment bleeding into his skin and making his eyes so hard to meet—as if Izaya now held power over him with his words the way he had always wanted to.

He found himself unable to contemplate the possibility. Instead of pleasure all he could find was stumbling fear, air like weights in his lungs and blood like ice in his veins, and when Izaya fumbled to grab the door to the hallway his other hand closed on soft fabric in his pocket—Shizuo's bowtie still kept there like a hunting trophy, except it felt less like Izaya was the hunter than the other way around.

He kept it linked between his fingers the entire way to his home. The cloth might as well have been a chain.

 

* * *

 

Izaya woke up at five in the morning the following day, his headache gone but his body still sore from the fall and the stress. He stayed in bed without moving despite his hunger, ignored the stickiness of his skin where he had sweated during the night. When he had waited long enough that he thought office hours were open, he called his doctor.

 _"Nosebleeds are pretty common,"_ the woman said icily. _"Are your veins bulging?"_

Izaya looked down at his forearm, at he imprint of his veins under his skin like bruises. "Yes," he replied.

 _"Pregnancy means more blood in your body,"_ she explained, and he could hear the click of her pen against her old wooden desk as if he was sitting before her. _"Small vessels in your nose tend to burst from the pressure. It's not especially dangerous for you or the fetus. Do you have any other worries?"_

Izaya thought about Shinra's words. He thought about the unchanging numbers on the scales every morning after he bathed, about the hunger pans he was reluctant to indulge—about anemia, about light-headedness and blurry eyesight, about Shizuo's face open on guilt and longing.

"No," he said, and he hung up.

This morning he put away the scales into the lowest cabinet of his bathroom. He banged his head on the corner of his sink while trying to stand back up, and Namie found him like this, eyes damp from the sharp pain in his skull and ears ringing from her shrill laugh even after she helped him to his feet.

He expected Shizuo to show up in the morning, then during lunch, then all afternoon until Namie said her last parting bite of the day and left, the door slamming shut behind her. But it wasn't until the sun was down that his phone rang, that the dark of his room lit up with _Shizu-chan_ written white on grey on his phone screen. Izaya looked out the window to the twilit skyline and turned on the speakers.

 _"I'm coming over,"_ Shizuo said. He didn't sound angry. He didn't sound much of anything.

In any other circumstances Izaya would have turned in a joke, would have jabbed at Shizuo's lack of restraint or his own, would have waited in expectation of the only outcome that Shizuo coming over ever had between them. But this time all he said was, "All right," and all he felt was the wrong kind of anticipation. One that reminded him more of their fights and less of their coupling.

Shizuo must have called him from the bottom of the building. It wasn't two minutes before he pushed open the door to Izaya's hallway without knocking or waiting to be invited in. Izaya glanced at his face for the briefest second before walking to his kitchen and turning on the kettle.

"Is tea okay?" he called tensely.

He heard Shizuo shuffle behind him. "Yeah," he replied, more breath than word. He hesitated to come in, and settled on going back to sit on the couch outside while Izaya collected himself.

None of this would be so difficult if Shizuo was as bad a person as Izaya was, he thought faintly.

In the end he came out with two burning mugs of tea in hands, put one on the coffee table in front of Shizuo without meeting his eyes before walking away to sit on the other angle of the couch.

Shizuo winced when he touched the cup. He rubbed his fingers together to dissipate the burn. "Sorry for calling in so late," he said quietly. "Work—"

"Yes, I'm familiar with the concept," Izaya replied immediately. He was clenching his own cup without drinking from it. He watched absently at where the skin of his fingers turned red against the ceramic, felt with distance the itch of the burn where his knuckles pressed into it.

Shizuo frowned at him. "No need to be an ass about it."

"Don't you know better than to think I can be anything _but_ an ass to you?" Izaya asked idly, taking his first sip without recoiling even as he could feel his tongue sizzle.

"Look," Shizuo growled. The arm of the couch creaked under the weight of his hand. "I get that you're angry at me, but we're not going to get anywhere if you just sit here attacking me for every little thing."

"Why would I be angry at you?"

"I don't _know_ ," he hissed, hand coming to wrap itself around his knee instead of anywhere breakable. "Why the fuck won't you _tell_ me?"

He was looking at Izaya with so little effort, focusing all of his attention on him as if it was as simple a task as to lift his eyes and stay, and Izaya had to breathe from his nose until his lungs quieted.

"I told you," Izaya said, the words slow and deep as he could make them, "that we don't have that kind of relationship."

Shizuo clenched his teeth, and for a second Izaya thought with breathless expectation that he was going to insist, and he didn't know if the cold in his belly was from hope or hopelessness; but Shizuo breathed in, and closed his eyes, and when he looked at Izaya again it was with grim resolution.

"I talked to Shinra," he said. "About…" He stumbled; took another breath. "Well. He said you can still—that, if you want to, there's still time to stop everything."

Izaya's chest felt like a brick wall. "Yes."

"Yes," Shizuo repeated. "And I wanted to tell you, that if you need me to sign anything—"

The laughter was all nerves when it pushed itself out of Izaya's lungs, no humor and no kindness. "I don't _need_ your authorization," Izaya said. It ached to smile but he did anyway.

"I know you don't," Shizuo said, more softly. "You're into all the shit that goes on in these parts of town, you could probably get someone to do it illegally."

"I'm glad your pea-sized brain can deduce this far."

"All I meant," Shizuo continued as if Izaya hadn't spoken, "is that I won't interfere either way. Do whatever you want. And I'm sorry for putting you in this situation."

There was a silence.

"We were two having sex that day, Shizu-chan," Izaya said.

"Yeah," Shizuo replied, cheeks darkening. "But I'm not the one growing a baby inside me. And I," he glanced to the side, clenched his hand tighter around his knee, "I'm guessing this isn't especially comfortable. For you."

Shizuo had always been ridiculously good at this; as if respect had to come hand-in-hand with violence of feeling, as if he couldn't properly hate Izaya unless he knew how to address him. Shinra had slipped up, and Kadota even more, but not Shizuo, not as teenagers and not as adults, not in front of others or in the privacy of a bedroom, not with his fists punching next to Izaya's head or his hands pressing warm against slick skin. Not once. Not ever. Izaya looked at the side of his face, at the slouch of his neck, and thought of putting his hand there—he imagined reaching over the space between them and tugging Shizuo's head down, downer, until it looked like a bow forced by the strength of Izaya's hands alone instead of Shizuo's willingness to comply. The picture branded itself into him so that he could almost feel Shizuo's lips dry and warm on his, could almost sense Shizuo's hands searing at his hips the way they always did, and heat spread through him like liquor until he couldn't help but breathe out of his mouth shakily.

He asked, "Do you actually want to have a kid?"

Shizuo's hand slipped on his leg as he toppled under the motion of what could be a flinch but looked more like his leaning forward to stare at Izaya again, guilt dripping into longing and longing turning into hope. Izaya thought he could have remembered of the _Yes_ that left his lips for the rest of his life even if he hadn't heard it.

Really. Everything would be so much simpler if Shizuo was as monstrous as Izaya wanted him to be.


	2. Part II

**Aches Like Nothing  
** **Part II**

_eleventh_

_Shizuo says you're keeping the baby_.

"I don't know why you're so obsessed with this," Izaya said, looking up from the phone screen to the sleek darkness behind Celty's visor. "You've never talked to me this much before. You do realize I'm still the same person, right?"

He knew he sounded bitter more than amused by the time he stopped talking. This was supposed to be a brief interview, Celty joining him in front of a gas station so that Izaya could tell her about what he wanted to hire her for, but Celty had been distracted, sidetracked into attempts at small talk Izaya didn't know how to answer, and now Izaya was brimming with what could be irritation but felt a lot like self-consciousness. Not that he could tell the difference anymore.

 _I know_ , she was writing now, shifting on her heels with excitement, he thought. _But it's hard to reconcile Izaya, the bastard I know, with Izaya, the guy having Shizuo's baby_.

"Frankly, it's none of your business."

She tilted her helmet to the side, and sunlight caught Izaya's eyes blinding-bright for a second. He scoffed softly.

Her bike made a sound, like the whinny of a horse; Celty patted it as she would the flank of an animal. He watched her gloved hand make contact with what looked like gleaming metal but wasn't, and had to tell himself once again that she wouldn't let him touch it even if he wanted to.

She leaned against the thing, took out her phone again to type. _Why isn't Shinra your doctor?_ she asked.

"I've had a real doctor for years now," he said. He hunched his shoulders, arms pressing tighter against his sides and the ache in his chest. "Surely this doesn't come as a surprise."

She didn't move for a moment, her attention fixed on him in ways different from a human's. It felt a little like being stared at by a lion.

 _Shinra told me all about you after I first worked for you_ , she said.

"He would do something like that," Izaya replied tensely.

She shrugged. _If it were anyone but you I'd feel more sorry about it_ , she typed, harsh as she always was—so much harder to deal with than Namie's brand of merciless chitchats. _To be fair, I still don't get exactly what the big deal is about you being a man_.

He laughed, tongue turned to acid in his mouth, and when Celty's helmet lifted in a show of attention, he said, "Me neither. That's what the big deal is about."

She didn't look like she understood, but he hadn't expected her to. He never expected anyone to.

 _The thing is_ , she typed after a moment of confusion, _he said not a lot of people would treat you right for it. I thought it meant_ he _would._

Izaya had thought so as well. He had latched onto the evidence of Shinra's continued presence in his life, onto his willingness to indulge Izaya's quirks when they were young, taken it to mean that at least for this Shinra would always be available. For this, if nothing else.

He breathed in the cold smell of gasoline and metal and pressed himself further into the corner of the convenience store. Celty's helmet was still turned to him in consideration.

 

* * *

 

_twelfth_

The text came as the last dregs of afternoon trailed by, slow, sluggish. Izaya had stopped taking in new clients; the woman who was leaving his apartment as one of his phones lit up on the corner of his desk was one he had been working with for a long time—and so he felt comfortable enough to only wave her off without the need for obsequious farewells, one hand in the air and the other reaching to brush plastic right as the vibrating stopped.

"I'm leaving too," Namie called as he unlocked the screen.

Izaya raised his head. "So soon?"

"It's almost six," she replied with boredom. "There's nothing more I can do today."

"Yes. It is getting quite boring for you around here, isn't it?"

She stared at him in silence, and Izaya waited.

He knew what she wanted to ask. He knew she had noticed the patterns of his closed contracts and obligations and could sense the end coming. She just didn't know how to ask what it meant for her.

She made a move, sudden and hazardous, grabbing her forearm as if she had begun to reach for her elbow but got stopped halfway through. "You're starting to show," she informed him.

Izaya exhaled through his nose slowly. "Your point is?"

"You won't be able to keep up the pretense for long—people are already starting to notice your little secret."

"I'm not hiding it," he replied.

She snorted. "So you tell yourself. How many people have you been upfront with about this, besides me and your childhood acquaintances?" she taunted.

He managed to fight off the need to snap at her, only because he knew that she was asking all this for a very precise reason. "You don't care. You don't mind."

"I don't," she said, and she shook her hair back over her shoulder impatiently. "Because I don't give a shit. But your clients, your sources, the Awakusu… they will care."

Izaya looked at her face. She was frowning as if in pain, and he knew it wasn't pain about him, but there was still a hint at the curve of her chin, like the lightest of trembles, something that made his stomach knot on itself with longing.

He clenched his free hand. "You don't have to worry about yourself," he said. He had to swallow back the nod in his throat before continuing. "I'll be taking a break for a few months, but I'll keep protecting you from Nebula—as long as you promise to keep working for me once I get back to it, of course."

"You know I don't have a choice."

"Something I'm eternally grateful for. You're such a big help, Namie-san."

Her mouth tore itself on a grin, bitter and appreciative at once. But then it disappeared, and she said, "What about the kid?" and Izaya's breath caught hard in his throat.

"What—" _What about it?_ he wanted to say. The words never came.

Namie looked at him with pity. "You should've aborted it," she said, her words like ice on his skin, freezing over him until he couldn't move at all. "This is too much for a scheme, even for you."

"I'm not doing this as a scheme," he managed to get out.

"Please. We both know that just because you realize you shouldn't doesn't mean you're not gonna do it." He couldn't find anything to reply to that, so she sighed, and spoke again: "I can't think of anyone more ill-adjusted to have kids than you, and that's disregarding who I suspect the other daddy is." Izaya felt his soul flinch against the rigid block of his body, as if she had struck him from the inside, her long fingers digging into his entrails to rip them apart.

"You're going to fuck this up," she finished. He couldn't have looked away from her even under lethal threat. "And this, it's not going to be pretty. This one fuck up… it's a fuck up you'll be carrying with you your entire life."

"You think you have any right to—" he breathed, but she cut him off.

"I have every right. I know a goddamn thing or two about growing up with awful parents," she scowled.

Izaya rose up from his seat. _You think I don't?_ he tried to ask, but the words stayed on his tongue, crawled back inside him to shackle him down to the truth of her words, to the rotten core of himself where doubts lay alongside the overwhelming discomfort of the past few weeks—the hope crushed to ashes under resentment for the swell of his breasts and the beginnings of softness around his hips and belly. The hunger and the pain and the dizziness, and this was only the start of things, this was only going to get worse and never eventually better, all for something he didn't know he wanted but had decided to keep anyway.

There was only silence around them now. Water dripped from the faucet in the kitchen, louder than his heartbeat.

"Do you see what I'm saying?" Namie asked softly.

Izaya closed his eyes. "Get out."

"You won't be able to run away from this forever," she said, a warning and a threat. "You decided to go through with this, _you_ decided to have the child of a man you hate—"

"Get out of my house," Izaya said again, and as he stepped forward his hand gripped so tight around Namie's arm that her face flinched in pain.

"Fine," she said, and she ripped herself away from him, catching the fall of her motion with hurried footsteps. "Fine. Ruin yourself, and your own kid, and Heiwajima Shizuo too. See if I care."

She bumped against a potted plant on her way out, and it broke on the floor, spilling dirt out like guts.

Izaya stood still long after the bang of the door slamming shut stopped echoing through his empty apartment. Outside the light had started to dwindle to red instead of gold, the sky turning to dark in the horizon.

The phone in his hand buzzed again. He hissed out a breath, and unlocked it with unsteady fingers.

 _I'm outside your building,_ the text said. It took him an alarmingly long time to look up to Celty's name and understand that it was her talking, and longer still to bring himself to scroll up to her previous text: _We're having an unplanned hotpot party, do you want to come?_

It vibrated again while he was staring at the screen, and this time Celty was saying, _I just saw Yagiri Namie leave in a hurry. She didn't even insult me. Is everything okay?_

Izaya sucked in a breath, and his chest flared with pain above the hollowness he could feel clawing at his flesh.

 _I'm busy_ , he typed quickly.

Her reply came even faster. _No you're not_. _I'm coming up_.

He groaned lightly and pressed a shaking hand to his clammy forehead. He let himself sink back into the soft of his couch, eyes trailing over the ever-lit television screen constantly running mutely in the background in the hope of anything catching his attention as he worked.

He heard Celty's steps outside his home long before she made up her mind to knock and push open the door. She always sounded less heavy than humans, less substantial. He didn't turn his head to look at her until she was standing next to him.

"I'm tired," he announced, interrupting the soft tapping of her gloved fingertips on her phone. She lifted her helmet in a show of attention. "Long day. Pregnancy. All that."

She shrugged, and typed again. _A good meal would do you some good, and the baby too_ , she showed him.

"Hotpot is for the winter," he replied, mouth dry. "Do you people have no sense of the seasons?"

 _I didn't think you cared about things like that_.

He scoffed. With how wrought and hollow he felt, it came out as a sigh.

Celty shifted on her feet, helmet shaking from side to side as she took in the inside of his apartment. There were open boxes on his desk, files spread over the dining table and the corner Namie used as a working place. He knew it looked as thought he was closing office for good.

For a moment he tensed in preparation for her questions. Thankfully, Celty was more tactful than Shinra if no less mean when she wanted to, so she simply crossed her arms, phone still clenched in her hand.

Izaya cleared his throat. "Hypothetically," he started. "If I did go with you, who else would be there?"

Her shoulders shook once, and she hurried to write her answer. _Shizuo, of course_ , she said bluntly, and Izaya gritted his teeth but kept reading, smoothing his face into neutrality. _His boss, too. Kadota and his friends, Harima Mika and Yagiri Seiji._

Namie wouldn't like this, Izaya thought distantly. His secretary's words were still ringing at his ears like the deep echo of a church bell, grating, nauseating. "Is that all?"

Celty typed some more. _Mikado-kun will be there too. And his friend Sonohara Anri-chan. I don't think I'm wrong to expect that you know her_.

Izaya smiled tightly. "She won't be happy to see me. It might ruin the entire night for her."

Celty moved her shoulders up and down, the closest to an eye roll she could manage. _Maybe_ , she replied. _But Shizuo's evening will suffer even more knowing that you chose to seclude yourself here instead_.

He tensed up all the way to his neck, an ache like a bruise coming alight on the entirety of his body. "I should think the reverse would be true," he tried, but the words fell flat even to his own ears, and Celty stared at him with disbelief written in every line of her stance. "Okay," he amended, throat tight. "All right. I'll go."

 _Wonderful_ , she replied.

She fashioned a helmet out of smoke deftly, and he almost let it fall to the floor as she threw it to him, surprise and reflexive apprehension stalling his movements. He caught it, though, his fingers hooked at the opening, and for a second stress rippled into childish curiosity for the texture of it. It didn't feel like he was touching anything. There was weight at his elbow, and resistance different from air between his thumb and index, but nothing else to prove the existence of what he was holding to his senses.

When he lifted his head to look back at her she was holding up another message for him: _Do you need anything else?_

"No," he said.

The clothes she wore had the same lack of actual feeling, Izaya thought dizzily once he was seated behind her on the Cóiste Bodhar. When he closed his arms around her he could feel the girth of her body, but no fabric under the pads of his fingers. As though he was grabbing at solid nothingness.

Celty rode carefully with passengers. He had seen her drive away in a flash, her horse's neigh ringing like an omen into the minds of people around her. But with him she was slow, her lean body shifting against his only to bow carefully into every turn. No one paid them any mind. At one point she held out her phone again, the device shrouded in shadow against her back as they waited at a red light. _I know you haven't talked to Shizuo in weeks_ , she said. Izaya swallowed, chill air flowing unfelt against his numb chin.

"Don't text and drive," he replied. When her shoulders sagged he couldn't tell if it was from disappointment or to push her creature into motion again, green light rippling on her helmet but absorbed to nothing over the rest of her.

Shinra's apartment building appeared soon enough, glinting in the setting sun, sleek and white against its greying neighbors. Izaya dismounted Celty's bike with some lingering regret and followed her into the lobby and the elevator.

He started feeling tense as soon as voices rushed to his ears from the hallway of her home. He stalled for as long as he could at the door, taking off his shoes and stretching his shoulders, but Celty was waiting, helmet off and smoke hovering over her severed neck like a great eyeball watching his every move. He crossed the opening to the living-room.

It seemed a lot smaller than usual, cramped with people he knew directly or not. Conversations faltered once people caught sight of him, and when he skimmed through the people present he only had time to catch surprise and no small amount of suspicion—resentment, too, stark and sudden on the Sonohara girl's face, before his eyes met Shizuo's.

Shizuo didn't smile. His face relaxed, though, all at once, the same faintly sad expression he had worn during their last talk wrinkling his brow and softening his mouth, and Izaya exhaled shakily and turned his head away.

"Welcome," Shinra greeted him with a grin. "You look as grim as always. The embodiment of sinister."

"You don't sound surprised to see me," Izaya said dryly.

Shinra hummed. "Celty was really adamant about you being here. I knew she wouldn't let you slip away easily."

"Your girlfriend does drive a hard bargain, for a monster."

The man beamed as if Izaya had complimented him. When Izaya looked over the shoulder of his lab coat he met Sonohara's stare. She frowned at him, before looking back to Mikado sitting next to her.

He sat down at the edge of the couch on Mikado's other side.

"Izaya," Kadota said from where he was sitting at the table by his left side. He flicked a glance to Shizuo's quiet figure at the other side of the room, then back to Izaya himself. "This is a surprise."

"I like to keep things exciting."

Kadota laughed. "You got kidnapped by Celty, more like."

"Why are you here?" Karisawa asked, chin resting on the heel of her hand, her bright eyes fixed to his. "Wait, let me rephrase that. How are you here, and still alive?"

Kadota made a face. Izaya made himself smile and said, "If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

She didn't seem put off by his words in the least. She didn't ask anything more, though; next to her Yumasaki whispered something, and she answered in kind, finally tearing her eyes away from Izaya's.

Mikado was the one who handed him a plate, with awkward, jerky movements and a face full of curiosity. Izaya thanked him but didn't engage him in a conversation. He pressed further into the couch and let the hot food rest untouched on the coffee table. It didn't smell bad. He just didn't feel like eating.

"I saw your sisters today," Kadota said lowly.

"Yeah?" Izaya replied. He stared at the floor unseeingly.

"They seemed okay. Already made a friend in school and all that."

 _Kuronuma Aoba_ , Izaya thought. He would be the kind of classmate his sisters would befriend.

Kadota was sat too far to the side for Izaya to see him unless he turned his head and shoulders around, but he still heard him shift on his chair, metal scrapping against the floor as he moved. "Why are you here, Izaya?"

"People are asking me all sorts of questions today," Izaya replied, a smile on his lips but irritation creasing his brow. "I never thought you of all people would indulge in gossip, Dotachin."

"Don't call me that," Kadota retorted. "And I don't see why me asking about you is a big deal. I don't hate you."

Izaya let his neck rest against the back of his seat, let his eyes roam over the white ceiling and bright windows. "You don't hate anyone," he said. "In your case I'd find it more interesting if you did despise me."

"Morbid guy," Togusa Saburo commented evenly from his seat next to Kadota. Neither Kadota nor Izaya answered.

The smell of cooking meat was all around him, not unwelcome but not especially appetizing either. In the end conversations started again despite his presence, and if more or less everyone kept throwing him sideway glances at least no one tried to engage him directly. Izaya busied himself by staring at the windows and the darkening city outside, the golden hour gone to make way for purplish fog and clouds and the very first pinpricks of stars into mud-colored sky. Little by little he relaxed, Namie's words fading into the memory of the Cóiste Bodhar silently carrying him through the streets of Ikebukuro, the vibrations and bumps of the road the only solid proof of its existence.

Then the back of a hand touched his nape lightly, and Shizuo's voice said, "You should eat," soft and slow above him, and Izaya's eyes snapped open and his heart jerked inside his chest as if he'd suddenly been thrown into freefall.

He breathed in shakily, as quietly as he could. No one turned to stare at him that he could see—and to his left and back there was only the excited murmur of Karisawa's conversation, the lower tones from Kadota and his friend, and in the distance a voice he thought belonged to Harima Mika, shrilly calling for people who wanted second servings.

Izaya looked at his own plate. The food wasn't steaming anymore that he could see, was probably cooling already, soggy and tepid. He took it back to his lap, and ate.

His phone buzzed as he was finishing. _Stay until everyone else is gone_ , Celty was saying now. _I'm talking to Shinra_.

He thought, faintly, that it ought to sound ominous, like everything he read and heard these days, just a further notch up the ladder of his stress. But with food heavy in his stomach and the comfortable angle of the couch at his back all Izaya could feel was drowsiness. He didn't know he had fallen asleep until Shinra called his name what felt like a second later, and when he blinked himself into almost-awareness near everyone had left.

"Orihara-kun," Shinra said again. "Everyone's gone already."

Izaya grunted and rubbed his face with his hand. "Yeah, I can see that," he croaked.

In front of him Celty was putting away the dishes. Through the open balcony door Izaya could make out the dark of Shizuo's silhouette cut against the night sky, the faint smell of tobacco slithering in despite the wind to carry it outward.

Shinra sat down next to him and cleared his throat. "Celty yelled at me," he said.

It took a few seconds for the words to make sense inside Izaya's head. He met Shinra's eyes under the hood of his hand at his forehead, and the man was watching him pensively, with regret on his face Izaya didn't know whether was imagined or real.

Shinra sighed, and said, "I admit I tend to just let the habits take over around you. I've always tried to avoid being close to you in any way, so you asking me to oversee your pregnancy was a bit much."

"Is this supposed to make me feel better?" Izaya muttered.

"Just explaining myself," Shinra smiled. And then, more seriously: "The thing is, I'm a very childish person. I see you asking anything of me, and the first thing that goes through my brain is, 'Look, Orihara-kun is trying to get close again, time for us to get out of this situation'." Izaya laughed, and Shinra winced, but took the mocking in stride.

It didn't feel real. Not Namie's outburst, not the living-room full of guests, not Shinra's words sounding too close to an apology.

"I'm not going to forget this," Izaya warned after a brief silence.

Shinra nodded. "I know. And I only have myself to blame, etcetera."

Izaya lowered his hand, looked at him straight in the eye. "So what is it that you really want to say?"

"Well," and Shinra fiddled with the sleeve of his coat, and brushed aside his hair jerkily, "what I meant to say is—when you do this, when you try to get close again, we both know how it goes. But this time, me refusing you… I didn't realize how cruel it was. I let the habits take over, and it didn't occur to me that keeping you away for my own peace of mind wasn't the humane thing to do. Not in this case."

"You're never humane," Izaya said around the tension in his chest. "Only human."

"Yes," Shinra said. "But you're still one of the few people I call friends, horrible personality and deeds non-withstanding. And you've only asked me for the minimum of help in a complicated situation, because I'm the only person you can turn to in this case." He smiled shakily. "If I said no, I wouldn't be very deserving of Celty's love, don't you think?"

Izaya's breath caught in his throat. Before he could speak Celty walked up to Shinra, put a hand on his shoulder, and though she didn't have a face her body was turned to Izaya, and Izaya felt like he was meeting her eyes—and she looked like she was smiling.

"Oh, of course, I don't have the equipment to completely take care of you," Shinra added suddenly. "You'll need to get your ultrasounds at a hospital, and the birth will have to happen there too. Knowing you there's no way your baby will come out without a fuss, and I would actually feel bad if one of you died on my watch because I can't perform emergency surgery on a newborn or you need a c-section."

" _Shinra_ ," Shizuo groaned from where he was eavesdropping at the window, and Celty moved as if to walk away in exasperation.

Shinra grinned at Izaya. "I can do the lab tests you'll need, though, and check on your general health, and answer the worries you've been hiding from your actual doctor. On the house."

Izaya didn't try to speak. Relief swelled inside him, filled in the hole stress had been digging for weeks now. When he risked a glance to the balcony Shizuo was back inside, leaning against a wall and looking at Izaya with a smile on his lips.

Izaya breathed out softly. "I'll see you in a few days for all that, then," he told Shinra, and Shinra nodded.

 _Do you want me to take you back?_ Celty asked.

"No. I'll call a cab, or walk the way home." He stood up—pressed a hand over his clothes to smooth out the wrinkles his sleep had caused—and as he walked around the couch and back toward the hallway he felt his steps falter in front of her.

There was nothing to see. No bones or blood or muscle at the clear cut of her neck. Only a pit of blackness, what could be a single layer of smoke or a gaping hole for all he knew—Celty's shadows swallowed light like a starved animal. There were tendrils of it level with his face, moving slowly in patterns she probably didn't quite mean them too. She was high-shouldered, he thought. If she had her head—if Izaya were to hand it to her, or place it at the stump of her neck like a piece of some grotesque puzzle, she would be taller than him.

"Thank you for inviting me," he said, and he didn't look at her throat but at the puffs of black smoke above it instead. She touched his elbow gently in answer.

Fresh air felt good on his face once he stepped outside the building. Shizuo had the decency to wait for a minute before falling into step beside him.

"I'll walk you home," he said lowly.

Izaya glanced at him quickly, but Shizuo was looking at the ground in front of him. "This isn't your way at all, Shizu-chan." He paused. "Or do you want sex? Because I haven't exactly been in the mood recently."

In the dark he couldn't make out the blush on Shizuo's skin, but the sight of his stumbling steps was enough for satisfaction to run up his spine.

"Shit," Shizuo cursed softly. "Why do you always have to—" he stopped, and breathed in harshly. "Never mind. I don't want sex, all right? I just wanna make sure you fucking make it home."

"Because I'm so in need of your protection," Izaya mocked, but Shizuo didn't answer. He did close the gap between them, though, and every time they stepped forward his arm brushed against Izaya's and the knuckles of his hand bumped into his. Izaya felt his own face warm. "I'm just walking to the cab station anyway. It's a bit far from here to my apartment by foot."

"I've seen you run twice that distance before."

"Well, I'm not exactly in top condition, am I?"

Shizuo tensed beside him. "Sorry," he said, and Izaya saw red.

He stepped aside, lifting his arm so his elbow could hit Shizuo's in the process. "Stop apologizing," he ordered.

"I _can't_ ," Shizuo growled. He looked frustrated now, but not angry—he hadn't been angry at Izaya, not for long, not for a long time.

It infuriated him.

"I could've stopped it all without you even knowing about it," he said harshly, and Shizuo recoiled lightly but didn't break eye contact with him. "I still could. Stop acting like you're forcing me to do this— _no one_ forces me to do anything."

"But do you really want to?" Shizuo asked. Izaya bit his lip, and opened his mouth to answer, but he was cut off again, "We haven't talked about anything. Shit, yeah, I am in board with this—I _want_ to have a kid. I want to have several kids. I always have."

Izaya's heart was beating erratically now, hard and painful against his ribs, and Shizuo's face had taken the color of longing again, and apprehension, and maybe fear.

Weirdly enough, Izaya's first thought was _We're not having any more kids after this_. But he closed his mouth instead in the momentum of surprise and horror. Shizuo either didn't notice or didn't comment on it.

"Izaya," he said. He stepped closer. "We _need_ to talk about this."

"Not now," Izaya replied automatically.

Shizuo swore. "You always fucking say that. You can't run away your entire life, you know," and then he marked a stop, because Izaya flinched bodily at this—Shizuo's words superposed themselves to Namie's like a horror recording, and his heart pumped blood like a man wheezing for a last breath—"Are you okay?"

"Yes," Izaya breathed. And then, blinking himself back to reality: "Yes, I'm _fine_. _Why_ is everyone acting like I'm about to drop dead?"

Shizuo considered him for a moment before sighing. "We wouldn't if you weren't always acting so dramatic."

"Says the man who uproots public property at the sight of me."

Shizuo's gaze softened. "I don't do that anymore," he said. "You know I don't."

The only source of light in the vicinity was an old street lamp at the mouth of the alley. In its yellow glow Shizuo's eyes looked lighter, gold instead of brown, with tiny flecks of black in them like the footprints of insects. When he breathed out Izaya could feel it on his face.

Shizuo raised a hand and put it at the back of Izaya's neck where his hair was rising, where shivers came to life from the sweetness of his touch.

"I don't want sex," he said again.

"Pity," Izaya let out. Shizuo laughed, bitter, and pressed his fingers into Izaya's skin slowly.

He whispered, "God, Izaya." The words came to tangibility on Izaya's skin, a caress so light it tickled his eyelids into closing.

He was never supposed to sound like this. Izaya had yearned for the day Shizuo's voice would turn to pleas, but not like this—not with him pressed so close Izaya forgot all about the cold night around them. Not with his nose brushing Izaya's forehead and not with warmth on his words, as if he was dying from something other than hatred—as if he didn't mind being shipwrecked so much as long as Izaya was the one to tear the hull apart.

 _You're going to fuck this up_ , Namie said in his mind.

Izaya took a step back.

When he opened his eyes again Shizuo was in the process of closing off his emotions, disappointment starker on his face than outrage would have been.

"Not now," Izaya repeated. His mouth was dry.

"Okay," Shizuo said flatly.

 

* * *

 

_thirteenth_

"You seem healthy enough," Shinra commented. "But you need to eat more."

"I _am_ eating more," Izaya said, and Shinra shook his head.

"Snacking during the day isn't enough. You need full meals, and healthy ones at that. I'll write down some tips and you can get Yagiri-san to cook for you."

Izaya paused with his head caught at the opening of his sweater; but Shinra had turned away to steal a post-it note from Izaya's desk, so he didn't say anything and pushed the cloth all the way down to his neck before sweeping away the hair that fell into his eyes.

"Have you done an ultrasound yet?" Shinra asked once he was done writing. He stuck the note to the corner of Izaya's glass coffee table and sat down on the couch again.

"No."

"Orihara-kun," Shinra sighed. He pushed his glasses up his nose. "I can examine you, but I can't examine the fetus. You need an ultrasound."

"It's just a bunch of fast-growing cells floating in mucus," Izaya replied, rolling his eyes. "What could be wrong with it?"

"Trust me, you don't want the answer to this."

Izaya lay back on his couch, leaving his pants on the floor where he had thrown them after Shinra told him to strip. He had been feeling more energetic for the last few days. He slept peacefully, dreamed of nothing, and completed his work with easy focus. Despite Namie's absence he hadn't fallen behind on his schedule, but this could be due to his dwindling workload as much as his boosted energy levels. He was only working with Awakusu and a few other corporations from Shinjuku now.

"Shinra," Izaya said lightly.

"Mmh?"

He turned his head. Shinra was already closing his bag and straightening his coat around his shoulders. "It's… normal to bleed even while pregnant, right?"

The doctor's head jerked in his direction. "What?"

"It was just a little," Izaya explained, throat suddenly locked on air. "At the beginning. Like a period, but with a lot less blood."

"You should've told this to your doctor as soon as you knew," Shinra replied. Izaya's heart was beating hard and fast now, sending blood to his head and blurring the edge of his vision. Shinra seemed to notice, because he frowned and said, "Calm down. We won't know until you get an ultrasound."

"Okay," Izaya breathed. "All right. I'll make an appointment."

"Good." Shinra stood up to leave, and Izaya made himself follow suit, pulling up his pants as he walked.

In the entrance his friend stopped again, one hand against the threshold and his eyes fixed unseeingly on the open kitchen door—from there Izaya knew he could see the edge of his fridge and the ridiculous things pinned there years ago by childish hands.

"You come from a family of twins," he said softly.

It took a few seconds for his words to crawl into Izaya's brain, gooey and awful.

Shinra looked at him again. "That might be why you bled."

"What do you mean?" Izaya said slowly, heart still as a stone. "Did I lose—"

"No. No, that's not it, stop making this face," Shinra whined.

Izaya rubbed his forehead with shaky fingers. "Please, just. Tell me what I did wrong."

"You didn't do anything wrong." He leaned against the door as he spoke, and Izaya focused on him instead of the fear clamming his insides. "Do you remember exactly when you had this period?"

Izaya counted in his head. "Three weeks in."

"Then it was probably just a vanishing twin."

"I don't know what that is."

Shinra raised two fingers. "Two eggs. Only one got impregnated. Your body simply got rid of the other as it did all the ones you didn't make into babies before—do I need to go on?"

"I think I get the picture," Izaya sighed. He tried to keep his relief to himself but it must have shown on his face anyway, because Shinra smiled.

"Do the ultrasound, Orihara-kun," he said, and he opened the door to leave.

Izaya worked most of the afternoon after calling the nearest clinic. He ordered food from a Thai joint down the street, ate most of it in a few minutes and let the rest congeal over his dining table until the smell was faint enough as to be unnoticeable to himself. He really was getting low on work with all the contracts he was putting on hold; having had no new clients in weeks it was only a matter of getting rid of loose ends and keeping up to date with Shiki Haruya's side-requests as he did his research on Amphisbaena and Heaven's Slave.

His door opened with no warning around four. Izaya pushed his chair away from his desk, and by the time he was on his feet Namie was walking into the room and dropping her keys loudly in the platter near the entrance.

For a breath they stared at each other in silence.

"I didn't think you'd come back," Izaya said at last. Namie clenched her hands, but she didn't move nearer, and she didn't walk away.

"Well." She sounded strained. "I still need you to protect me from Nebula."

He wouldn't have let them catch her. Even if she hadn't come back, Izaya wouldn't have let Kishitani Shingen's group lay a hand on her—and surely she knew it. Surely Izaya was transparent enough for her to know this.

He licked his lips and turned his back on her. "There's no work for you today."

"You've been living in your own filth," she replied immediately, probably looking at the cold takeout on the table and the disorganized files on her desk.

"I _am_ capable of living alone, Namie-san," he snapped, and when he looked back at her over his shoulder her body had slackened into habitual annoyance.

"Whatever. I'll clean this up at least."

She did so without another word to him. Izaya sat down again and listened to the rush of water in the sink as she washed his dishes, to the ruffling of paper when she sorted through the mess piled on her makeshift desk. All the while he stared at his computer screen, from the default wallpaper to the icon for a chatroom he hadn't visited in weeks.

Namie approached him when she was done. She stood behind him in silence, the shape of her body cut black-on-white on the now unlit screen.

"You're gonna need to do some construction work in this place soon," she announced. He knew she was eyeing the floor plans above which his hand was resting.

"Probably."

"Not probably. Definitely. Unless you want to have a baby screaming directly in your ear every night."

He felt his lips shiver into a smile. "I'm sensing some experience," he taunted, and he leaned back his head to look at her upside-down.

She frowned at him, her nostrils flaring surreptitiously. "Seiji was a bad kind of baby. Fussy. With karma like yours you'll get all of this and more."

"I've missed your kindness." And then, lower: "You're going to make me pay for this, aren't you?"

Namie smirked. "You'll see."

Izaya looked back at his desk and the spread of obsolete papers on it. "I'll let you oversee the construction, then," he said.

He felt her hand grab the back of his chair as she breathed, her fingers pushing between the back of his sweater and the leather covering.

"I suppose I can do this," she replied at last. "As long as I get to do something about that ugly corner up the stairs that you never even use, I don't care if I have to build a nursery on it."

 

* * *

 

_fourteenth_

Izaya woke up with a start, but it wasn't because of the ache in his lower back, and it wasn't from any kind of nightmare either. He lay on his bed with his eyes closed as he waited for the too-fast beat of his heart to quiet. From the open window chilly air slithered in, and this was his first hint that something was wrong. He found the second when someone rustled atop the sheets next to him.

He grabbed the knife under his pillow, and turned to his side slowly, and when he opened his eyes Mairu was staring right back at him.

"You're having a _baby_ ," she said in lieu of a greeting, and Izaya choked in answer, body relaxing all at once but heart skipping inside his chest as if it wanted to break itself on his ribs.

"Shit," he breathed.

"Bad word," Kururi's came softly from behind him. She was kneeling beside the bed, arms crossed on the edge of the mattress and her chin tucked into an elbow.

"You shouldn't swear, Iza-nii," Mairu added with a nod. "I can't believe you're already teaching bad things to our niece."

Izaya sat up slowly, throwing off his blanket and regretting it as soon as their eyes zeroed in on the clothes hiding his torso from view. He dragged a hand down his face, wiping the evidence of sleep from his features as he tried to calm down.

"Just give me a minute," he told them after a deep breath. "Go watch TV downstairs while I shower or something."

"No way," Mairu replied immediately. "You'll just crawl out of here while we're distracted."

"Doesn't Hanejima Yuuhei host a show every morning?"

"We're recording it," Kururi said. She fisted a hand into the fabric of Izaya's T-shirt, her eyes still set on his belly.

He leaned against the wall behind him, crushing his pillow behind his back. "Fine," he let out tiredly. "Ask your questions."

Kururi pushed herself up and sat on the bed next to him, her shoulder pressed against his. She hadn't let go of his clothes.

"When is she gonna be here?" Mairu inquired.

"There's no 'she'," he replied in annoyance. "It's the size of a lemon. Barely alive to speak of."

"There's no way you're having a boy. It's in our genes. Maybe you're having twin girls!"

"I'm not," Izaya said, thinking again of Shinra's words.

Mairu made a face.

"She's disappointed in you," Kururi informed him.

"Tough luck." He thought of his last appointment with his doctor, when she had briefed him on the lab results, and he said: "October. For the birth. I think."

For a minute they both stayed blissfully silent, stuck to Izaya's sides despite the sleep-sweat shining at his brow and the beginning of the day's warmth seeping into the room.

"Who's the other dad?" Mairu asked, then.

Izaya turned his head to look down at her. "Who told you?"

She took on a defiant expression, and on his other side Kururi straightened as if to solidify herself for a brutal interrogation—as if they were the ones being drilled instead of the other way around. Izaya shook his head.

"I hope this is the last of Namie's revenge," he muttered. The girls flinched, as good a confirmation as anything.

But then, "We told mom," Kururi said, and Izaya had to breathe through the grit of his teeth and the tightness in his chest.

He grabbed the phone on his nightstand. The screen unlocked to two missed calls and a voicemail.

He felt like cursing again.

"If you tell us who the dad is we can tell her to stop calling you," Mairu offered, gleeful.

There was no way Namie hadn't disclosed her suspicions alongside the news of the pregnancy, Izaya thought distantly. More likely than not Mairu and Kururi knew but wanted the pleasure of having him admit it out loud.

"I don't need you to control her for me," he said at last. "But nice try."

Mairu slid down into a lying position, swearing under her breath the way she had scolded him for doing earlier. On his other side, Kururi imitated her.

"Can we touch it?" she asked, her voice thin like vapor. Izaya felt his back knot itself up in tension.

"There's nothing to touch," he said tightly.

Her hand was tugging at his top insistently. Izaya raised an arm and then let it fall again, too tired or not feeling mean enough to bat it away.

"Fine," he relented, heart thrumming loudly in his ears. "I'll give you five minutes. Then you go to school where you're supposed to be."

Immediately Kururi's cold hand crawled under his shirt, mapping the now noticeable swell of his belly and the softness around it.

"Too soon to move," she said as if she was disappointed, but she was beaming, digging her fingers in as much as she could. They never pushed to the point of pain.

Izaya didn't really touch the growth there. He skimmed it in the shower just enough to feel the contrast of soft from excess weight and hard from the actual pregnancy, just enough to identify the edges of that which now grew inside him and disturbed everything from his sense of self to his every day physical balance. He had risked looking at pregnancy websites only once. He had seen the articles and the women commenting them, had read over the things they were supposed to be feeling, the things they did feel, and how wrongly they fit with what he was experiencing.

He couldn't connect with it. He minded having it here. He knew what he was getting into and he didn't regret it, but there was no love shared for the lemon-sized addendum to his body, nothing tangible to link him to the possibility of the person it could become—the person it would become.

Izaya liked people already grown and already shaped.

Mairu touched him as well, with soft, careful hands, and through the discomfort Izaya hoped that this was enough. That it was enough that other people cared for the bump and its inhabitant instead of him.

 

* * *

 

Shizuo was waiting at the entrance of the clinic, hair turned to gold by sunlight and dressed in old, soft clothes that only served to smooth the edges of his face and body. He looked younger in them, somehow, brighter even if the look in his eyes was anything but. Izaya thought briefly of turning away and ignoring his appointment. But he had come here prepared for this possibility, had long since made up his mind about Celty's unwavering involvement in trying to turn this particular mess into something less glaringly dysfunctional, so he stayed.

"Don't you say a word," he warned when they were level to each other. "Not one, during the whole thing."

"I'm not going to make fun of you for this," Shizuo replied with a frown.

Izaya breathed heavily, and his hands turned to fists inside the pockets of his coat. "That's not what I'm worried about."

He walked into the lobby and straight to the nurse at the counter to ask where he was supposed to go. "Third floor," she answered with a smile. For a second her eyes wandered to Shizuo beside him, to the open collar of his shirt and the bare skin of his arms taunt on lean muscles and bones.

Izaya bumped into the mug full of pens at the corner of the desk when he stepped away. They spilled to the floor like a bright and colorful rainfall.

For all that he had dreaded coming here to do what he had to, he didn't feel so tense anymore. The elevator ride up to the third floor was spent in complete silence. Though he could feel Shizuo's eyes on him they didn't provoke anything more than warmth at the memory of their last meeting and self-consciousness so deep and forgettable that he squashed it with barely a thought.

He never liked hospitals. He never liked the spotless-clean air inside or the blinding white halls, and most of all he despised the ones who worked in them.

The waiting room was almost empty. It was a corner more than a room, just a few chairs covered in fake leather in an alcove of the corridor. Only one person was there, a woman so heavy with child she looked about to give birth right there—and at the sight of her Izaya felt his skin shiver on his bones as if trying to detach itself from him.

Shizuo put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him toward a chair. Firm, and slow, and agonizingly controlled.

When he was called ten minutes later it was by a name he had almost never heard for more than a decade. It took a moment for him to link it to himself and understand that it was his turn, and longer still to rise from the hard chair and walk into the woman's steps. Shizuo followed him in silence.

"Please use this room to change into a gown," she told him once they were inside, opening the door to a small, closet-like space next to the ultrasound machine. Then, turning to Shizuo: "Are you the father?"

"One of them," Shizuo replied. She blinked owlishly. He didn't elaborate.

Izaya changed as quickly as he could.

"Lie down," said the woman once he was done. She fiddled with a few things in a metallic plate next to the table.

"My doctor should've sent you my file," Izaya said in a tight voice. The table was cold against his back, sanitized paper creaking when he moved to spread himself over it.

"Yes, yes. I understand that you haven't gone to a gynecologist?"

"That's right."

She frowned at that, and tapped the end of her pencil against an aluminum shelf. Izaya braced himself for her words, but in the end all she said was, "You should," before turning away to put on plastic gloves.

Shizuo stepped closer next to him, face tense and apprehensive as he looked over the tubes connecting the machine together and the black monitor in the middle.

Izaya sucked in a breath when the doctor came close again and her hands lifted the edge of the blue-white gown to just below his chest. "This is going to feel cold," she warned, and he did flinch lightly when she spread gel over his skin—but it wasn't from the chillness so much as the fact that she was touching him at all.

The machine whirred to life around him, beeps and growls and wild little lights.

When she first pressed the probe on his belly the monitor stayed black. Then it turned grey and blotchy, a mess of spots Izaya wouldn't have known how to decipher to save his own life. There was a light he thought was his bladder at one point, and then something darker and smaller, and for a minute the woman didn't say a word, stayed so focused on the screen that the first tendrils of panic settled to the back of his mind.

And then, "There," she said, and Izaya shot a hand out to clutch Shizuo's wrist, so tight he could feel the beat of his blood under his fingertips.

It was just another shape in the picture. Small, and curled on itself so that Izaya couldn't tell body and head apart.

"These are the legs," the woman said, pointing to the bottom left of the screen where the shape was pointier. "And that's the spine… and the head. I'm not seeing anything wrong so far."

Izaya let all the air in his body go at once. He sagged against the examination table, eyes fixed to the screen and the lemon-sized shaped on it until he thought he could make out its details. The shadow of a thigh, and undersized arms, and even at their end the relaxed curl of minuscule fingers.

Shizuo breathed in harshly. "Is that—" he said, and Izaya should be angry that he had spoken at all except he could hear it too now—the rapid-fire heartbeat almost drowned by his own, the way the shape shook every time it rang, and Izaya couldn't do anything but fit his thumb to the pulse at Shizuo's wrist and tighten his hold until he was sure he was bruising him.

"Oh," the doctor said.

"What's wrong?" Izaya asked, too loud and too fast for the breathlessness in him.

She shook her head. "Nothing. Do you want to know the sex?"

For a second her question didn't even register. He looked at her unseeingly, the greyscale picture like a lighthouse in the corner of his vision. When he did understand—when her words took meaning inside his head at last, Izaya laughed.

He laughed, bright and nervous, and his chest shook with it as if taken by tremors. He opened his eyes again and blinked away the heat and dampness in them, and she looked as if he had insulted her.

"I don't care," he said.

Shizuo's skin was warm under his palm. Little by little Izaya felt his own heartbeat match itself to the quiet one on the screen—quick like a bird's, and only slightly less erratic than his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said this story would definitely stay under 20k words... yeah... that didn't happen.  
> On less humorous news, writing this fic is extremely hard for me. I expected it but there's a world of difference between telling yourself you're ready to spend days writing a character feeling constantly dysphoric and actually spending days writing a character feeling constantly dysphoric. I really appreciate any kind of encouragement you can give me. I came close to giving up on this altogether.


	3. Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all of you who left comments on the last chapter. You have no idea how much it helped. This chapter especially contains some very complicated things to write about, and as much as Rihanna powers me through the discomfort her songs don't boost me quite as much as your feedback.
> 
> Chapter warnings: transphobia (specifically misgendering and deadnaming), parental emotional abuse and gaslighting (with implied past child abuse of the same kind), some pregnancy-related scares. Please be careful while reading and prioritize your own health and comfort. This said, I hope you still enjoy.

**Aches Like Nothing  
** **Part III**

_nineteenth_

If there were two things to say about Orihara Kyouko, one would be that she was punctual to a fault. When she didn't cancel an appointment she arrived in the nick of time, right when the arrow of any clock was about to jump from one minute to the next, as if she willfully strained to make it to that one second of timeless expectation that separated _on time_ from _late_.

The other was that her timing was always terrible.

Izaya had woken up this morning from a night of fitful sleep with his legs burning, shaking from hour-long cramps, and on the table by his bed his personal cellphone lit with an incoming message from his mother. _I'll visit you at ten_ , it said. There was an emoji at the end of the sentence, some bright face with sparkles she had learned from daily texts with Mairu and probably thought would reassure him about her intentions.

Izaya stayed in bed until even his blinds couldn't block sunlight from filtering in. June had come dry and warm, with only the city's smoke to blur the sight of clear sky and clean air when the sun rose to its highest; at nine in the morning its light already arched to rest close to the window in straight little stains, bright spots blending into one another from his hazy eyesight.

He felt the first sharp kick of the day a few minutes later. His back tensed on already aching muscles and bones, and he gritted his teeth and made himself breathe through his nose until he didn't feel like the panic was going to swallow him whole anymore.

The exercise didn't become easier with time. He still honed it in the hope that it would.

Eventually he shifted to his side and rose to stand, knees buckling sore and feeble but still able to support his weight.

He made himself go through the motions of showering and getting dressed, briefly considered breakfast before looking at the time and simply putting some water to boil. Namie was gone for the day, and so were the construction crew she had hired, leaving behind only the white dust upstairs where new walls were being finished and cleaned up.

Kyouko knocked five seconds before ten turned to ten-and-one. Izaya put the tea leaves to steep and pushed himself upright once more.

"Oh, darling," she said with damp eyes once he opened the door and she got to see him completely, from toe to belly to face and then back to belly. She looked pristine as ever, her hair only shy of reaching the length of Namie's and far darker, sleek and shiny at her back. When she embraced him Izaya touched it with one hand between her shoulder blades.

It was soft, and thick, like his sisters'. Unlike his own.

Kyouko pushed away after a minute. She must have come wearing waterproof make-up, because it didn't smear around her eyes even after she wiped the tears away firmly.

"You're so big already!" she breathed.

Her hands were around his hips, heels brushing the edge of the swell and fingers digging into soft flesh. Izaya grabbed her wrists gently to put them away. "It's been four months. Of course I'm getting bigger."

"How should I know?" she replied immediately, stepping backward to properly take off her shoes. "You never even told me. I had to learn from Kururi, of all people."

_Weeks ago_ , Izaya thought. "Do you want tea?" he asked instead, nodding toward the pot steaming softly by the window.

"Yes, please."

She walked to the pit in his living-room, sitting down on one of the leather couch with a blissful sigh. When he brought her a cup she drank from it immediately, no stress on her features to betray the burn of scalding tea on her tongue.

"I really should visit more often," she said. "You have such a nice place. A little messy, though."

"I had to move a lot of things downstairs while the nursery is being built," he replied curtly.

Her eyes watered again at that, and she grabbed his hand. Her skin was dry and smooth as a child's.

"Your father and I are so proud," she said insistently. "So happy for you."

Izaya swallowed and asked, "Where is dad?"

"Out of the country. He'll be back in time for the birth. But he sends his love."

"Of course."

Kyouko was still looking at him with a desperate kind of relief, so Izaya tugged his hand away and grabbed his own cup of tea. He didn't drink from it, though. The reddening skin of his knuckles was enough for now.

The silence was awkward for a while, broken only by the wind whistling around his open windows and the soft tapping of Kyouko's fingers on porcelain.

She cleared her throat quietly. "Have you reserved a room in a hospital? And how is the baby?"

Izaya relaxed. This was easy. "Yes," he said. "Yesterday, actually. And it's fine. No problems, so far."

"I remember when I was pregnant with you," she smiled gently. "You were a quiet baby. I hardly felt you kicking around at all, it actually worried my doctor at the time. But you were fine. Just very still. And so beautiful when I saw you the first time," she added, eyes bright in the soft light of day.

Izaya thought of the tugs and blows inside him daily, the jerky movements of the greyscale shape inside that woke him up at random during the night. "I see."

"Nothing like your sisters," and now Kyouko put down her cup so she could gesture freely, voice dry and amused at once. "God, what a pair of troublemakers. Sometimes I thought they were having a duel in there."

There was nausea now, stuck inside Izaya's throat, crawling and terrible.

Kyouko patted his arm, and he stayed still despite the awful shivers over his skin. "Be glad you aren't expecting twins. That was an awful pregnancy." And then: "Do you know the sex?"

Izaya tensed like bow. "No."

She waved a hand, dismissive. "There's no way you're having a boy. Family tradition."

"You know this isn't actually true."

Her gaze was sharp now, her smile in place but a tremor at her chin like the passing of a wave. "It was for me," she said.

There was condensation on the glass of the table. Little rings of mist around the heat of the cups sitting there as gas turned to water on the chilly surface. Izaya watched them expand and shrink, Kyouko's hand on his arm a burn more painful than that of boiling tea.

He swallowed. "Do you want to know who the—the father is," he asked, but his words died almost to nothing when he noticed his stumble. Other father. He had meant to say, "other father," and for a second his heart throbbed in his chest and his mind turned to paralysis instead of actual thought.

"If you want to tell me," Kyouko replied, unknowing or uncaring of the blood rushing away from Izaya's face. "I'd be happy to meet him, if he's the man you choose to spend your life with. But you know I don't really care about that."

"No," Izaya said weakly. He breathed in harshly and pressed his fingers into the bruise on his right knee where he had bumped into a door the day previous—"No, you can't stand having me for a son, but it doesn't matter that I'm having an unplanned pregnancy as long as you get to call it proof in your favor."

Her hand left his arm, delicate fingers rubbing together above her lap before she put them down slowly. "Nozomi-"

"Izaya," he cut in.

Kyouko's eyes shone with tears, angry ones this time, ones that made Izaya feel like a hole instead of a person. "You're still going on about this," she said with pain on her voice.

"I _told you_ ," he hissed. "I told you multiple times."

Her hand clenched on the opening of her handbag, leather creaking beneath her fingers. "Forgive me for assuming that you being pregnant meant you'd changed your mind."

Izaya's phone buzzed loudly on his desk. They both turned to look at it for a second, willing it to quiet or willing it to keep going.

"You're going to give birth," Kyouko said after a beat. "Men don't do that."

He pushed himself to his feet, breath cutting short inside his lungs with the first drafts of real panic. "This one does."

The text was from Celty, but that was as far as he managed to read with old heartache crawling into him and disappointment and anger thrumming colder than ice inside his veins. He heard the glide of Kyouko's silk socks on his floor as she walked toward him, felt the painful breath she took to speak as if it had come from his own lungs. He braced himself open-palmed against the surface of his desk.

"You always act like this," she said, loud behind him. "Making me feel like a terrible mother, like I've done something wrong to you. Like I'm the worst person on earth."

_Maybe you are_ , he thought viciously, but he squashed the words before they could leave his lips. "That's not what I'm saying at all," he replied.

She sniffed loudly, and a small, helpless noise escaped her mouth. "I'm trying, N—Izaya. But you have to understand that it's hard for me."

"I know."

She stepped beside him and leaned until he couldn't ignore her face in the corner of his vision even when he refused to look her way. She cupped his chin with her hand. Izaya clenched his jaw so hard he could feel the beginning of pain at its joints, just below his temples.

"I love you," she said with fervor, turning his face around to make him look at her. He towered over her by an inch or so. She looked older than he had ever seen her, her mascara still in place but her foundation smudged by her tears, exposing little lines around her eyes. Her other hand pressed against his cheek. "You know that I love you, right?" and she sounded so febrile now, so unsure.

"I know," he repeated before he could help it.

This made a smile shiver at her lips. "I gave birth to three daughters,"—his stomach clenched weakly through the hollowness, as if dwindling in determination—"you know I can't change that. No one can." She waited, but he said nothing, only looked at the dip above her lips and the flare of her nostrils.

She stroked through his hair softly. "I love you, no matter what," she said again. "Even if we disagree on this."

With anyone else Izaya would have said, _This isn't about disagreement_. He would've been scathing instead of hurt, would've grown angry and loud instead of silent and meek. But this wasn't anyone else. This was his mother, with his sisters' eyes and his hair color, and memories to her face, and her voice like an echo, like words said over and over again until he surrendered and retreated. No strength for protest when emptiness gaped in him like a terrible mouth, swallowing all of his insides, guts and muscles and bones alike.

"I love you too," he tried to say.

His apartment door opened, and Celty stepped in, black and tall and faintly surprised—the unlikeliest of knights.

He bit his tongue when he closed his mouth on the words, and he tasted blood.

Kyouko looked at Celty in surprise. She patted Izaya's head one last time before stepping away from him.

"Friend of yours?" she asked.

Izaya took a few seconds to muster enough energy to answer. "She works for me."

"I see."

Celty jumped lightly in place, taking out her phone to type hastily on it. Izaya put a hand on Kyouko's back and pushed her toward the entrance. "You should leave," he said. "We'll talk later."

She frowned at him, eyes still bright, cheeks still flushed from upset, and he felt the echo of her distress like a bell ringing inside him slow and deep and nauseating.

"Shirou will call you soon," she warned.

"That's okay. I'm always happy to talk to him." And he was. His father wasn't nearly as exhausting a person to be around.

Her face softened. She sniffed for a second, straightened her back, and when she turned to Celty it was with a smile on her face as charming as it was tedious. "I'm sorry I can't stay to make your acquaintance. Please take care of my—please take care of Izaya," she said, and Izaya looked out through the window to avoid the hopeful glance she shot at him as if to ask, _See? I am making efforts_.

She closed the door as quietly as she could on her way out.

Izaya traveled back to the dip of stairs in the room, took hold of his abandoned cup and swallowed the leftovers as he would alcohol if he hadn't been alone and if he hadn't been pregnant. The tea didn't even have the decency to scorch its way down his throat. It was tepid now, almost cooled to staleness over the last few minutes.

He heard Celty shift on her feet behind him, processed her light footsteps down to his level and the phone she thrust before his unseeing eyes.

_Was that your mother?_ she was asking. He nodded. She typed again, slower this time: _She's beautiful. You look a lot like her_.

For a second he stared at the yellow screen, not knowing how to answer her. "Thanks," he settled for as he put the cup back down. It clicked loudly against the table, and the sound traveled like an ache in his teeth. He inhaled deeply. "Why are you here?"

_I texted you on the way_ , she said immediately. _I thought I'd come up and see how you were doing_.

And, finally, anger broke through the murky apathy he felt, like starlight needling the night sky.

He turned to face Celty and said, "So you think you can just come and go as you please, do you?"

She didn't move away from him. He hadn't expected her to.

Izaya took a step forward and into the personal space she carried around as if she had any right to it. "What do you think you're doing, courier?"

Her helmet leaned down as she typed her answer. Izaya looked at the lightless void inside, and then at his own reflection, stretched by the curve of the visor so that his eyes stared back at him, wide and bloodless.

He grabbed the hand holding her phone and didn't flinch when her shadow immediately cuffed his wrist, sharp enough to cut if he bothered to struggle against it.

She typed, _What's wrong with you?_

"What do you get out of this, I wonder?" he asked for all answer. "Are you getting your kicks out of telling yourself you're gonna fix my own life for me? Is that what this is about?"

She would be staring if she could, he thought. But she couldn't. She didn't have eyes to see or a mouth to frown with.

She was just a monster.

"You told Shinra to be my doctor," he said, and he stepped farther toward her—the manacle around his arm tightened, skin breaking where bone stretched it thinnest. "And you told Shizu-chan to come with me to the ultrasound, because—because you think you know better than us how we should deal with all of this? Is that it?"

_I told him because I knew you wouldn't_ , she replied, the coldness of the screen enough to rip away every emotion he thought he had ever imagined her to have. _This is his child, too_.

"It's also _none of your business!_ " he yelled.

He was breathless, now, air rushing into him like a last effort to fill the hole where his control should be. He could feel blood drip from his wrist.

"This stops now," he said after a brief silence. "Your little friendship charade, your intrusions into my personal life… I want all of it to stop."

This made her react. _It's not a charade_ , she said. _I wouldn't manipulate someone like that. I'm not like you_.

He laughed, harsh and painful, until tears spilled over the corners of his eyes. "You don't want to be my _friend_ ," he declared. "You despise me."

_I'm trying, aren't I?_ she shot back.

He snorted. "Of course. Everyone does try so hard. It's too bad it never seems to go past the trying stage."

Her shadows's hold tightened again, if possible. By now Izaya knew that the warmth along his forearm was a steady stream, that the fabric of his sweater would start sticking itself to his skin any moment.

_When I took you to the party a few weeks ago_ , she wrote, _you seemed happy to be there. You didn't look like my attempts at friendship were bothering you so much_.

"Oh, please," he scoffed, hands turning to fists. "If you think having me over for hotpot is enough to make me palatable to your tastes, you're even more gullible than I thought."

_I could've left you here to brood alone all night_.

He tugged against his restraint. "And I'm ever so grateful. Really, what _would_ I have done without you to drag me to spend the night in the company of people I can barely stand? I'm sure the experience was enough to change me for the better."

By the end of his rant her shoulders were hunched over in distress or anger. When she lifted her phone again, her hand was trembling, and there were typos among the characters cut black-on-yellow: _I'm trying, Izaya. Shizuo is my best friend, and he loves you. I want him to be happy. If it takes the two of us being on friendly terms, I'm willing to try. Aren't you?_

"Pathetic," he spat out, even as he reeled from the message, even as his heart felt like it was being pressed on by the heaviest weight. "You're pathetic."

Celty started typing again in a frenzy; Izaya took a step back and kicked the phone away. It bumped against a wall, battery falling out and screen cracking under the shock. This time he winced when her shadow cut further into him and when he felt hot sticky blood spill over the length of his forearm.

"You're just a monster," he continued, uninterrupted now. He knew that if she bothered to look down, to stare at his breasts the way so many people did, she would see the rise of his skin with every beat of his heart, as if it was trying to jump off his bones.

"You can keep playing at being human, at being a woman and a friend, but we both know the truth. You'll _never_ be human. And eventually, even Shinra will leave you behind." He leaned in closer, ignoring the beginnings of the dizzy spell blurring the room around them until all he could see was his own crazed look on the surface of her helmet. "One day, he'll return to humanity," he said. "One day he'll realize that you can't love a monster." The words drew little mist rings on her visor.

She extended an arm, and for a wild second Izaya tensed in preparation for a blow; but all she did was spread her shadows again, bringing a pen to her hand and holding up what he recognized as one of his notepads. She ripped out the page once she was finished writing and shoved it in front of his eyes with slow, shaky movements.

_Are you talking about yourself?_ she said.

Izaya felt his throat close down. He turned away from Celty and blinked against the burn of his eyes, ripping his wrist out of her hold at last—she let him go, maybe out of pity, maybe because she had noticed the dark, wet spot on his sleeve. She followed him all the way to the ladder of his bookshelf, and she made a move as if to brace him when his newly-relocated gravity center made him buckle while climbing the first step. He pushed her away. He shoved off his files once he reached the next-to-last shelf, making papers fly messily to the floor, snowflakes of intel he had spent years gathering and organizing now laid bare for her eyes to see. For her lack of eyes to see.

He closed his hand around the grip of the case hidden against the wall. He tugged it free, the weight almost enough to make him lose his balance on the ladder, and then he threw it to the ground where it landed with a loud noise. The reinforced glass didn't break under the impact. The head inside rolled over in its greenish liquid prison, open blue eyes catching the light of day.

Celty dropped the pen and notepad.

"Still want to be my friend?" Izaya asked.

She didn't move for a while, and he knew that it was because of fear. When she finally did it was only to take a step backwards, and then to stop, because of course the appeal of something she had looked for for two decades was stronger than the terror of losing herself to it. He scoffed.

"Take it," he said. He hooked his other arm around the ladder when his legs shook beneath him as if all strength had been sapped out of them. "You'll be fine as long as you don't make direct contact with it."

She did, slowly, bending down first to brush her fingers against the glass and retreating almost immediately. But the head didn't move. It didn't blink. It kept staring at the ceiling with empty eyes.

Celty looked back at him, and though she didn't write anything down Izaya knew she was asking him _Why_.

So he smiled, and it hurt, and he said: "Now you know what it's like when the only thing people find valuable about you is something that isn't even you."

 

* * *

 

Shinra came in later that day to collect Celty's broken phone.

"If you talk to her like that again," he said conversationally, crouching to retrieve every bit of broken plastic and fiddling with the battery until the device turned on again. When he stood back up the row of scalpels inside his coat shone in the sunlight. "I'll kill you."

 

* * *

 

_twentieth_

They couldn't be called nightmares, not really. The dreams were too inconspicuous to warrant the title, too normal, devoid of the elements of horror that had occasionally made him jerk to wakefulness as a child.

It was more like waking up from a long, long sleep. Like dribbling out of a slumber so deep it left him paralyzed, limbs like bodies of still water, mind dragging back to life with fear at its front and loneliness gripping his heart through the early morning hours.

So he sat still until the sun was high enough to pierce the blinds of his bedroom. Until the smell of fresh paint had become unnoticeable from habit. Until he felt the kicks of the fetus inside him like sharp little tugs, and his brain freed itself at last of the bright flares of anxiety they caused him.

It ached like nothing he had ever known before.

 

* * *

 

_twenty-third_

Izaya didn't go out a lot anymore. If he did, he stayed in Shinjuku, strolled the streets at sunset when they were too busy for him to be singled out. People barely knew him here. People barely knew him at all aside from a special few in Ikebukuro and the ones who evolved in playgrounds where his services were required. That had always been his advantage.

Namie took one look at his face that day and ordered him outside. He whined for a front, complained about his back, and as she laughed at him he felt some sort of content, enough to bring himself to put on shoes and leave his coat behind.

It was warm outside, now. Flowery and damp. He walked to the border where streets spilled into Toshima and the entertainment there, skirted the edges until he had been out for more than an hour and most of the light around him was artificial rather than natural.

"Orihara Izaya," said a voice behind him.

He didn't react at first, not until wet cloth was shoved under his nose from behind and he mistakenly breathed in the sick-sweet smell of chloroform.

He elbowed the woman behind him, aiming for the chest, and she cried out sharply, stepping away until he was free to turn around and face her. The cloth fell to the ground silently.

"First rule of any successful broad daylight kidnapping," he slurred, blinking fiercely through the fog in his mind until his sight finally settled on the face of the one they called Earthworm. "Don't announce your presence."

She frowned, and took a step forward. Her heels clicked on the asphalt of the deserted street.

"I do believe we haven't properly been introduced before," Izaya continued casually. He hadn't inhaled enough to pass out, but his alertness was gone for sluggish consciousness. His fingers slipped against his phone in the pocket of his jeans. "I am, indeed, Orihara Izaya. It's nice to meet you."

"You're as slippery as our Owner told me," she said, her voice melodious in the silence.

Izaya laughed briefly. "You mean as whichever informant you hired told you. Or was it dear Shijima-kun from Heaven's Slave?"

Her nostrils flared, and she bared her teeth to him like an animal. "Never mind. If you don't come with me quietly, I'll take your sisters instead."

"If you'd bothered to do your homework on me you'd know this is unlikely to work as a threat."

For a second she looked as if she was about to lean backward and talk some more. Instead she kicked at the ground and flew at him, ripping a knife out of the silky vest she wore above her dress.

With his mind still working through the burn of her knock-out chemicals he barely managed to avoid the blade; it sizzled next to his cheek like a hot trail. He elbowed her again, but she avoided him—stepping aside to safety as he dragged himself back up and just managed to avoid stumbling.

"You can't fight like this," she mocked. "I can hear you heave from where I'm standing."

She was right. He was tearing every move out of the forced relaxation in his muscles, and his vision couldn't quite match the speed he was aiming for; the street was turning around him as if he was standing on a top.

"Maybe I'll aim for your stomach next time," she said sweetly. Her knife was glinting in her hands with little specks of yellow light. "Stab right through it." She licked her lips.

His mind was too slow to process much emotion on his face at the moment, but it didn't stop his slowed heartbeat speeding up as if he was running up a hill and warm liquid dripping from his nose to his lips, acrid and metallic.

She walked toward him again, thumb stroking the handle of her knife.

And then she flew into the wall of a house with the sound of cement crackling and bones breaking to crumbs, and Shizuo stepped into the light, letting the pole he was holding clatter on the ground.

"Is she going to fucking stand up again?" he growled at Izaya, and Izaya had to close his mouth sharply at the sight of fury not directed at himself, rip his eyes away from shiny sunglasses to look to the wreck of Earthworm's body on the ground.

He swallowed. "No. She's done for."

" _Good_."

Shizuo raised a hand to Izaya's face, and if he weren't half-unconscious on his feet Izaya would have flinched back, feelings relenting to decade-old habits. But all Shizuo did was wipe the blood away from Izaya's lips and mutter, "You're bleeding again," uselessly.

Izaya almost laughed. He almost cried, too.

He gave himself a couple of seconds to bask in the feel of Shizuo standing in front of him, within easy reach of his body and lips if he bothered to reach at all. With his eyes closed he breathed in the scent of tobacco, of mint and sweat, and then he pressed a weak hand to Shizuo's torso to push him away.

"How much did you hear?" he asked.

Shizuo frowned. "Enough to bash her head in."

A chuckle escaped Izaya's lips. He wiped his bloody nose again, and fought for balance as he tried to step toward the end of the street.

"Are you all right?" Shizuo asked, following him. His hand came around Izaya's shoulder as if to brace him in case of a fall. "You're not steady on your feet."

"I'm a little drugged, right now," Izaya drawled. Tried to drawl.

"Shit. What with?"

He flicked a glance to Shizuo's other hand as it came up to take off his glasses. "Probably a very bad mix of knock-out chemicals, made by an amateur. I smelled chloroform," he said.

Shizuo's hand did press to skin then, holding just below his shoulder. "Okay. I'm walking you home."

"'M fine."

"You were _drugged_. What if you collapse and get mugged on the way?" Shizuo said softly, and Izaya pushed him off again, no matter that he was the one stumbling aside instead of the solid wall of Shizuo's body.

"I'm not a damsel in distress," he groaned.

"I never said you were."

He looked so painfully earnest. Brow creased in worry and hands open in surrender, as if that was needed—as if he had done anything but surrender for half a year now, every time they saw each other. And Izaya was so very tired. So very tired of swimming against the currents trying to drag him to the remembered light and furnace of Shizuo's body opening to his in the dead of night or under the slow beat of the sun, so exhausted of telling himself he didn't crave this with every inch of his being.

He clenched his hands inside his pockets so he wouldn't try to grab at Shizuo's shoulder like a drowning man. "Fine."

Shizuo didn't touch him all the way home. He matched his speed to Izaya's uneven steps on the sidewalk, took it upon himself to check for green lights when they had to cross a street because he knew that Izaya was too focused on not falling to do much else—or because he wanted to. Because he was fussy like this, when he loved someone. Izaya's heart was too doused in fatigue now to try to dance, but each beat felt like a hammer was ramming his insides and rattling his ribcage and tearing open his lungs.

He collapsed on his couch when they arrived, the lit lightbulb on his ceiling drawing black spots in his visions that carried around when he tried to look elsewhere. Shizuo sat down on the other couch and took out his phone, dialing slowly before putting it to his ear.

"It's me," he said after a while. His fingers brushed lightly against Izaya's neck before settling on the pulse beating at the hollow of his throat. "Izaya was drugged earlier. Can you come check up on him?" A pause, filled with Shinra's voice turned to distant static, words blurring into each other. "Yeah, he's conscious. Kinda unsteady, though. I'm pretty sure he's been on the verge of passing out for half an hour." Izaya grunted at that, but all Shizuo did was press the flat of his hand against his collarbone in reassurance. "Okay, thanks. See you in a few." He hung up, and threw his phone over the rest of the couch.

"They're coming over," he said after a brief silence.

_I gathered as much_ , Izaya wanted to say, but neither his mouth nor his brain seemed willing to obey him, because all that came out was, "Celty too?" weak and unsure, like a child's plea.

Shizuo looked at him in surprise. "Yeah. Of course."

It was harder to focus on not falling asleep with Shizuo's hand still spread over his chest, putting pressure over his heart. His skin was rough there despite slender fingers and delicate-looking joints, callused from years of ripping itself and everything around it apart. Izaya didn't have to imagine, now, to know what those hands felt like when they touched with kindness and pleasure in mind.

It had been so long since that January night. Izaya closed his eyes and allowed himself some memory of warmth, some inklings of shallow breaths and damp skin and opened-mouth kisses like a rush of hot air over his body, flushing his face and tightening his belly.

It was okay. It was all right. He wasn't risking anything, because Shizuo would never agree to touch him while he was drugged out of his mind anyway.

He jerked to awareness what felt like a few seconds later. When he opened his eyes Shinra was kneeling next to him, a needle already perched at the crook of Izaya's elbow.

"Welcome back," Shinra said lightly. Izaya barely felt the prick of the needle through the haze in his mind. "Don't worry, you've only been out for about fifteen minutes."

"Where's—" but Izaya's voice was more of a rasp, almost inaudible.

Shinra still nodded in understanding. "He went to get you some water."

Behind his shoulder, Izaya could see the dark of Celty's body hovering at the entrance of the room like a terrible ghost. She didn't move to approach him even when he stared at her, and the tightness in his chest didn't relent at all.

"The baby's heartbeat sounds fine," Shinra said after a brief silence. "I'm gonna do some blood tests to make sure you didn't inhale anything too dangerous, but I'm pretty sure that was mostly chloroform, seeing how you're still, well, alive. I'm going to give you some iron supplements, though."

"What?" Izaya breathed. "Why?"

Shinra touched the side of Izaya's nose where his skin was still crusted with blood. "I'm confident the tests are going to tell me you're anemic. And you haven't gained enough weight either."

"I've gained a _lot_ of weight," Izaya protested, batting Shinra's hand away heavily.

"Not enough," Shinra replied.

Shizuo appeared behind him, and put a glass full of clear water on the coffee table. He glanced at Izaya briefly before stepping toward Celty at the door, and from the corner of his eyes Izaya saw her entire body relax at his approach.

"Orihara-kun," Shinra said softly. "You should probably prepare yourself for a preterm birth."

Izaya's breath came to a stop.

"I'm not saying this to make you panic," he continued. "But it doesn't take a genius to see that this pregnancy is extremely stressful for you. And that you're not really the most stable person around even without this amount of pressure."

"What does this have to do with—"

"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about."

Izaya raked his teeth over the bite marks on his lips. His throat felt dry. "So you're saying," he tried. "You're saying that because I'm—that this is going to hurt the fetus."

Shinra shook his head. "The only thing I'm saying is that your mind is under a lot of stress, and your body too as a result." He stood up, knees cracking under the movement. "Just, try to avoid sources of anxiety, okay? And get yourself some pregnant yoga classes or something."

"Never," Izaya hissed. Shinra laughed brightly.

He joined Celty and Shizuo in the hallway, whispered something for their ears only. Shizuo was nodding along with a vague frown to his mouth, but Izaya wasn't looking at him this time.

Celty's helmet was turned in his direction. He couldn't read anything from her posture or the black tendrils of shadow hovering around her where her neck met the opening of the useless protective gear.

She left with Shinra a few moments later, and when they were gone Shizuo walked back to the couch and sat down behind Izaya's head with a heavy breath.

"Shinra said I should stay with you while you sleep. Make sure you don't choke or something."

"He is ever so cheerful." Izaya pushed himself upright. His limbs felt like lead, but he didn't want to stay horizontal while Shizuo looked over him.

"He did sound like he was joking," Shizuo said when their eyes finally met. "I can go, if you want."

Izaya surprised himself with how much he _didn't_ want that. "Just stay," he replied, too tight and too fast. "It doesn't make any difference. You can take my bedroom."

"Don't be stupid." Shizuo rolled his eyes. "Come on, I'm helping you upstairs."

He did, with one arm braced around Izaya's back and his hand pressed beneath his armpit, the other holding Izaya's spread over his shoulders. The stairs seemed steeper than they really were. To his credit, Shizuo only marked a brief stop at the sight of the newly-built walls closing the mezzanine from view.

"You can use the shower," Izaya breathed once he was sat on his bed. He took off his shoes and jeans, too exhausted to feel embarrassed by the softness of his thighs or the red marks below the swell of his belly. "If you don't mind I'll allow myself to sleep in my own filth."

"Don't be so dramatic," Shizuo replied, annoyed. But he peeled his vest off his back and set it on the chair by the window, and once Izaya was lying down he walked to the bed and touched his fingers to warm skin above the collar of Izaya's shirt.

Izaya passed out with the sound of running water for all lullaby.

 

* * *

 

The disgusting taste in his own mouth woke him up far into the morning, and he groaned, dryness keeping both his lips and eyes closed until he managed to bring up a hand and rub his face. He stumbled his way into the shower with the weakness of fasting rather than that of drugged numbness. He only bothered to shed his clothes once water was starting to run down his body.

He felt better, after that. More alert, even if still physically weak, but at last his mind was running at full speed, and once he had brushed his teeth under the shower spray and towel-dried himself to something presentable, it was only a matter of answering the hunger growling in his stomach.

He almost missed the note stuck to the door of his fridge when he opened it. _Have the decency to warn me after a wild night in_ , said Namie's scratchy handwriting, followed by something that looked like a drawing of Shizuo destroying his furniture.

He peeked his head outside the opening of the kitchen. Shizuo was asleep on the couch, facing away from the room, and a blanket was thrown over him too precisely to have been here for more than an hour. He always moved around in his sleep.

"You're getting soft, Namie-san," he muttered. The note crumpled in his fist.

Shizuo woke up from the rumble of the kettle. He was still wearing his clothes from the day before, open shirt creased by sleep and belt undone for comfort. Still, he looked infuriatingly well-rested for someone who'd slept on the couch.

"I don't imagine you have anything sweet in there," he mumbled, blinking sheepishly at the cupboards around him.

Izaya snorted. "I have enough for you to make yourself an omelette, and you can even sweeten it if you want. I'm almost certain there's some of my grandmother's raspberry jam hidden somewhere if you prefer toast."

"Your grandma makes you jam, and you don't even eat it? You're so fucking ungrateful," he scolded. But he was looking around the kitchen with the hint of a smile at his chin rather than true irritation.

Izaya watched him lean over the sink to reach the depths of the supplies stocked in the cupboard. He brought his mug to his lips even thought he knew the tea hadn't finished steeping, even though he knew the water was too hot still to be drunk without pain—but it was better to pretend that the heat in his face was from steam dampening his skin rather than the sight of Shizuo's shoulders stretching beneath white cloth.

He cleared his throat, and took a sip of scalding, tasteless tea.

Once they were both finished Izaya stalled by cleaning the dishes until not a spot of grease or dust could be found on them. Shizuo fixed his appearance in the bathroom upstairs, but once he was done he didn't leave. He sat down at the table behind him and waited.

Izaya turned around slowly.

"There's a new room upstairs," Shizuo said. He was staring at the surface of the table, running short-cut nails over it so that it made a faint, scratchy sound.

"Yes. It would become necessary anyway once… well. Once it's here."

Shizuo nodded. Then he swallowed, visibly, and turned in his chair so that they were directly facing each other. "Izaya," he said, with what could be a threat but sounded a lot more like yearning under his voice. "We need to talk."

Izaya sucked in a breath before acquiescing. Shizuo's face relaxed all at once. He stood up.

"I wasn't…" he started, then stopped. "I told you that I've always wanted kids."

"You did," Izaya said.

"Yeah. Well." He scratched the back of his head, looked up to the white ceiling above them. "Obviously, this isn't really how I expected it to happen. I'm a little old-fashioned. Always thought, if it happened, it'd happen once I'm married and settled with someone I love."

Izaya felt his chest tighten to the point of pain. "Nothing's stopping you."

Shizuo bared his teeth, frustration rolling off of him like a wave. But he breathed in instead of lashing out, and closed his eyes, and when he opened them again Izaya had to make himself stare, had to stop himself from looking away from them. "You know that's a lie," he said. "I know you do."

Izaya closed his hands on the angle of the counter behind his hips, until his palms ached like bruises.

"Listen," Shizuo said more quietly. "This isn't how we both thought it would go the first time we slept together."

"An understatement."

"Yeah." He laughed, bitter. "I hated you so much. I thought that was just one more fucked up way for us both to interact. One more way to hurt ourselves and each other."

He winced softly, no doubt remembering the ever-lasting dissatisfaction of those encounters, of Izaya goading him into a different kind of violence, once he was even more loath to forgive himself for. Skin stained to red and blue and nails gouging blood out of whatever place they could find, as if pleasure between them necessarily had to come out of pain.

"Anyway," Shizuo said heavily. "I never thought at the time that I'd be having a child with you. And even when I started feeling—" he hissed out a breath, and Izaya felt it like a stab between his ribs. "The thing is," he continued, "this situation is a mess. And to be honest, I'm terrified of messing it up further. I want to have my place in this child's life, but I don't want to make it so you or they get fucked up in the process."

"I'm not going to prevent you from seeing your own kid," Izaya said breezily.

Shizuo blinked at him, face pale but determined. "It's what I want to think," he admitted at last. "And if it was just the kid maybe this would be easier to deal with, but it's not just the kid." He stepped forward then, hands coming up to either sides of Izaya's face in askance. His thumbs stroked over Izaya's cheekbones before coming to rest at his temples. "I'm bad with words," he whispered, like an offering.

"Yes," Izaya replied, heat like the sun's flaring inside him, "you really are."

Shizuo kissed him as if he was on the brink of death. As if he had to drink the air directly from where Izaya breathed it, his hold as delicate as if he was handling porcelain, with the taste of raspberries on his tongue and his lips wet and warm like daylight on dew. Izaya grabbed yellow hair to stop the spasms in his hands, ignored the pain in his lower back from being pressed into the counter in favor of the angle of his neck pulsing with tension and want. In the end it wasn't the press of their mouths that did him in so much as the feeling of Shizuo's eyelashes growing damp against his cheeks and the caress of his hand trailing down from his face to the hollow of his neck, fingertips hovering over his pulse as it to make sure it was still here.

 


	4. Part IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am unironically thanking Rihanna again for giving birth to this entire story. Seriously what would I do without her songs as background noise when I'm pulling fanfic all-nighters.
> 
> Chapter warnings: sexual content, one mention of suicide, and, uh. Semi-graphic birth scene. And a big big scare. But I repeat, no child death.

**Aches Like Nothing  
** **Part IV**

_twenty-fifth_

_"I see,"_ Shiki said, static cutting his words into sizzling sounds over the line.

Izaya shifted on his back, trying to fit the pillow into the curve of his spine to alleviate the soreness in his hips. He had one hand under his belly where kicks kept coming every time he spoke as if in fearful surprise to the sound of it. He could hear Namie walk behind him and the whispering sound of paper in her hands with every folder she put into place. There weren't many left now.

_"And where can I find this woman now?"_ Shiki asked. He took a silent breath, then exhaled loudly, and Izaya could almost feel the sweet-smelling tobacco he preferred tickling his nostrils from habit.

He smiled faintly. "Probably in any of the hospitals in Toshima," he replied.

There was a pause. _"Did you hurt her?"_

" _I_ didn't. But it was absolutely my fault. In my defense, she tried to hurt me first."

Shiki took a moment to frown over his words, probably before deciding they would be better left alone. _"I'll look this up on my own, then, and take it out of your payment for this time."_

"That's fine by me," Izaya said airily. "I did botch it up after all. As an apology, I can give you everything I have on Heaven's Slave at half my price."

_"I told you not to look into them,"_ Shiki growled.

"Ah, but, you see, the two are extremely related. They originated with the same person, and grew apart over the years without even knowing about it."

_"And who's that?"_

Izaya hummed. The fetus kicked into his palm in answer. "An old childhood acquaintance, as it turns out. I'm sure you can imagine how surprised I was."

For a moment there was only silence as Shiki drew the conclusions on his own. Then a sigh, and his voice again, threat and warning at once even with distance and electronics to dissipate the raw edges of his words: _"You're playing dangerously, informant. I may tolerate your little games for now, but don't think I'll allow them to continue forever."_ And, more softly: _"The world won't always do your bidding."_

Izaya felt his lips quiver, and didn't know whether to smile or let fatigue droop at his chin the way it did at his shoulders and back. "Yes. I'm starting to realize this, I think."

It was more than he had meant to say; but Shiki didn't comment on it, only let the quiet take over the almost-inaudible sound of his car's engine in the background.

_"I'll take the info about Heaven's Slave, then. As well as the name of your friend,"_ the man said lowly.

Izaya turned his head to the coffee table where his laptop stood. It was awkward to extend his arm to the mouse this way, the angle a strain at his shoulder. He only needed to send the message, though, not write it. "It's sent. Don't be too harsh on poor Nakura, I doubt he meant for this to happen."

_"Your concern is noted,"_ Shiki replied dryly.

Izaya chuckled. Then he winced, because the following kick came higher this time, into the stretch of his belly where his skin was taut and tender. "I'll be taking my break from work starting today," he said once his heartbeat became manageable again. "I'll contact you as soon as I'm available."

He heard leather creak over the phone, as if Shiki had suddenly straightened in his seat. _"How long do you think you'll be out of action?"_

_I've got plenty of action coming up_ , Izaya thought, in a weird sort of amusement. "It's hard to say. Six months, at least. Not more than a year."

_"This is a long time to go without an informant."_

"I know," he replied, and this time the smile on his face was genuine in humor. "Which is why I can put you in contact with someone I know if you so wish. He authorized it."

_"Do you trust him?"_

"I don't trust anyone, Shiki-san."

Shiki let out a rough laugh. _"Fine. Send me his contact info."_

Izaya lifted a second phone above his face. He squinted at the too-bright screen until he could read over the text he had written in advance before sending it away. Shiki's phone buzzed loudly in his ear a moment later.

There was a brief span of silence as Shiki clicked the link he had sent and then no doubt tried to make sense of what he was seeing. This time Izaya had to actively refrain from laughing.

_"This leads to a chatroom, Orihara."_

"Yes," Izaya replied jovially, and then, before hanging up: "Have fun with Tsukumoya."

He threw the phone over the side of the couch perpendicular to the one he was lying on. His aim was off, but Namie caught it before it could bounce off the back of it and crash to the floor.

"You're not nearly as serious about this as you should be," she scolded, and Izaya waved at her lazily.

"He only threatened me once this time," he replied. "Plus, he's going to have a hard enough time dealing with that cyber soul-sucker without spending his energy taking revenge on me."

There was a wrinkle in the middle of her forehead. It was always here as far as he could remember, but this time his attention caught on it and on the rest of her face, and she looked older than she was—thirty more than twenty-five, so tired was she of dealing with him. Strangely, the thought didn't make him feel as satisfied as he would've expected.

"I'm done putting everything away," she said after a brief silence. "There's nothing more for me to do before your pet monster arrives."

"He's not my pet," Izaya said.

She snorted softly. "Boyfriend, pet, baby daddy. Whatever you wanna call him. I'm gone."

She stepped away, but Izaya raised his arm and managed to catch the sleeve of her sweater between his fingers. The back of his knuckles brushed against her dry skin.

She stopped in her tracks immediately.

"You're not coming back, are you?" he asked.

The look she gave him was a lot irritation and a little regret. "As I said, there's nothing more I can do. Not until you start seeing clients again."

"I could hire you as a nanny."

"Not on your life, Izaya," she growled immediately, and he laughed despite the lack of amusement he felt. He let her sleeve slip from his fingers as she stepped away from him.

The sound of the door closing behind her felt like finality.

Izaya only moved a long time after she was gone. The fetus had grown silent and still inside him, as if to honor the feelings he didn't know how to name. Summer light burned on him from the blinding-bright windows, making sweat dampen the skin of his back crushed against the sleek fabric of his couch; but he didn't stand up, didn't cross the few steps separating him from the stairs and the promise of a cold shower above. When he looked up he could see the new walls built around the nursery. They were lighter-colored than the rest of the place, as if the paint was still fresh and sticky to the touch.

Shizuo knocked after about an hour of his brooding. Izaya pushed himself to his feet with self-consciousness stuck to him like a second skin. Shizuo didn't have a key, yet

"Hi," he said, looking briefly over Izaya's sweaty forehead and the slouch of his shoulders. "I brought food."

"I'm not hungry," Izaya replied, and as Shizuo was about to protest he smiled and added, "not for food at least."

It was always amazing to watch the rush of blood to Shizuo's face so fast and colorful, the bright red staining his cheeks and burning his ears. He would never tire of it, he thought.

"We're eating," Shizuo declared before pushing at Izaya's shoulder to step inside.

He half-expected to be left aside during the cooking process; put at the table to wait patiently as if handling pots and cutlery was too taxing an effort now for his heavy body and stress-riddled mind, as Namie liked to call it; but Shizuo took him by the wrist when he made as if to drag away a chair, and Izaya couldn't have buried the relief he felt if his life depended on it.

Their elbows bumped as they worked. With every brush of Shizuo's bare forearm against his Izaya felt a shiver of something familiar and new, a different kind of desire than the one that had taken him as January died with the heat of their naked bodies.

They had ended on the floor, that night. If he shifted his gaze from the sting of the broth boiling in front of him he knew he could find exactly where Shizuo had sat once they were done, smoke pouring from his mouth to graze Izaya's skin like the sharp end of a knife.

"You okay?" Shizuo asked. Izaya smiled tightly to himself and said, "Yes."

The food was good. Better than he'd had in a long time. But even it lost to the sight of Shizuo's lips wet and warm from the steam of his bowl, or the sheen of sweat on his brow from the heat; and when Izaya touched their feet together he flushed even further, eyes turning dark under the hair falling down his face. He didn't think either of them were paying much attention to what they were eating. _He_ couldn't. Not with liquid want inside him, as sudden and overwhelming as a rogue wave on the sea.

He drank tea to soothe it afterwards, and watched Shizuo fold his body at the hips to clean their dishes, hands itching to grab, to pull.

"Can I see the nursery?" Shizuo asked after he was done. Izaya had to blink himself back to reality before he could even process his question.

"Sure," he said.

Shizuo watched him insistently. And then— _He wants me to come with him_ , Izaya thought. _He wants me to take him upstairs_.

He put down his lukewarm tea before the faltering grip of his hand could betray him.

Shizuo followed him up the stairs, his eyes burning Izaya's nape with every step. The door to the nursery was closed, and the inside empty. There were only walls, and a few cardboard boxes left behind by the workers Namie had hired when they left weeks ago. A thin layer of dust had settled on them.

"I haven't bought anything yet," he said after a brief silence. "I thought we could—" but he didn't know how to say it, or didn't know for sure that the words would come out.

Either way, Shizuo seemed to understand, because he nodded calmly. "We can take care of that later. There's still time."

_"You'll be at risk starting this week,"_ Shinra had said over the phone. Izaya swallowed. "Yeah, there's still time."

He watched Shizuo run a hand over the off-white paint of the walls, thin knuckles unfolding carefully, as if he was afraid of breaking just by touching. It was the same way he had started handling Izaya after a few months, after too many bruises not finding their echo on his own skin despite Izaya's many attempts. Open-palmed and sincere as he had always preferred to be. As Izaya had told himself he didn't prefer him to be.

Izaya looked at the pads of Shizuo's fingers whitened by dust and sunlight, and opened his mouth again.

The fetus kicked.

He winced reflexively, bringing up a hand to rest where the sharp pain of the blow was already fading, and Shizuo's eyes zeroed in on him.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing," Izaya replied immediately.

"Izaya—"

"It's really nothing." He licked his lip habitually. "It kicked, that's all."

In the moment it took for Shizuo's face to clear of worry and dip into stricken wonder, Izaya's heart had time to go up his throat, fast and bruising and absolutely unstoppable.

"It's _moving_?" Shizuo said shakily.

Izaya should make fun of him for this. He should laugh at the childish surprise painted on him and push him to discomfort and shame, but the fetus kicked again, and—"Of course it is," Izaya replied, but his voice fell flat on panic. It wasn't like having Namie see him like this. Shizuo had no business witnessing him lose his composure over something as insignificant.

It never felt good, feeling it move. It never brought him bliss or happy apprehension. And in front of Shizuo all it did was drag fear to the front of his mind and dig in deep to revive Celty's words, and his sisters', and his mother's.

Izaya licked his lips again, grabbed Shizuo's hand harshly, and slid it under the hem of his shirt to the base of his belly, just above his pelvis; Shizuo's fingers relaxed all at once to flatten against his skin, and when he breathed it was only a gasp close to Izaya's face, a rush of hot air on his cheek as he regained his balance from the sudden movement.

For a moment they both stood still in expectation and fright. If he bothered to turn his head Izaya knew he would find Shizuo looking like a statue of himself. He murmured, "Come on," through gritted teeth, like a dare or an insult; and when another kick came into Shizuo's palm he almost sobbed as if his own self was being ripped out of him.

" _Fuck_ ," Shizuo let out, palm immediately pressing to Izaya's skin in answer. "Oh, shit."

He waited a few more moments as Shizuo stroked over his belly in search of more movement. Then his grip tightened around his wrist and he tugged it forward and away from him.

Shizuo let go immediately. "Izaya?"

"Just a moment," Izaya breathed in answer. He made himself inhale through his nose and exhale through his mouth as every website said he should.

"Do you need…" but Shizuo's voice trailed into nothing. Izaya forced his hand to relax and his fingers to stop digging so much into the pulse beating at Shizuo's wrist, quick and strong.

"I'm fine," he said at last.

"You're full of shit, is what you are."

Izaya gritted his teeth and raised his head to look at him. "I said I'm fine, Shizu-chan. Shouldn't you be happy you got to feel your kid moving? I hear this is the pinnacle of fatherhood."

Shizuo frowned, then, lips falling into a grimace instead of a smile. He rotated his wrist inside Izaya's grip so he could wrap his fingers around Izaya's forearm instead, and if his touch didn't burn as it had on the skin of his belly it still felt unnaturally warm, as if Izaya had been cold his entire life until now.

"What is this about, Izaya?" Shizuo asked.

"Why does it have to be about anything?" And he meant it as light-hearted as it wasn't, with a smile on his lips he knew could drive to rage the calmest of clients.

But Shizuo looked at him and said, "I'm not Celty."

Izaya's felt his chest throb in a long and painful stroke. "What does she have to do with—"

"Please," Shizuo said, voice soft. "Don't make the mistake of thinking I can't tell when you're trying to hurt someone."

"I'm always hurting someone," Izaya replied truthfully. He scratched the inside of Shizuo's wrist lightly, and pulled him closer again. "Are you coming to that realization now, Shizu-chan?"

Shizuo looked at him in silence. Izaya's heart flung itself at his ribs with every breath he could feel caressing his face.

"A shame," he added. "If you wanted a good family you should've knocked up someone else. A woman, maybe."

"We were two having sex that day," Shizuo said, and Izaya clenched his teeth once more.

"You're not going to _fix me_ ," he growled. "You, or Celty, or my mother. None of you is up to that task."

"I'm not _trying_ to fix you," Shizuo replied, and though there was a pleading edge to his words it was lost under the weight of—everything else, inflections and feelings Izaya didn't have a name for. "God, Izaya, what is it gonna take for you to understand that I love you?"

Izaya's breathing stopped dead in his chest.

Shizuo's hand squeezed his forearm briefly. "I didn't fall in love with a woman," he said. "And I didn't fall in love with some picture-perfect version of you I made up for myself. I fucking _know_ you. I'm not Celty.

"Please," he repeated, and his hand was sliding up his arm now, wrist moving out of Izaya's grip so he could grab his upper arm instead and press his thumb into the crook of his elbow. "I'm not trying to patronize you. I'm worried about you, that's all."

Izaya looked at the fit of Shizuo's hand against his arm. Thin knuckles and careful fingers. As gentle as Izaya preferred them to be.

"When the—when it kicks," he said. He stopped for a moment, struggled to find his words; in the end they came out of him inaccurate and lacking. "I don't feel so manly."

Shizuo raised his free hand and fit it to the curve of Izaya's neck.

"There have been plenty of times recently where I didn't feel like myself," Izaya continued. "But the worst is when it moves. I feel like I want to run back in time and prevent it all from happening." He leaned across the space separating them and pushed his forehead against Shizuo's shoulder. "I don't _regret_ it. I had plenty of time to decide this before the deadline for abortion was up." He closed his eyes, and breathed in the smell of cheap tobacco soaked inside the fabric. It wasn't as strong as it used to be, and with a start, Izaya realized that he hadn't seen Shizuo smoke even once in front of him in months.

Of all things, this made heat gather at the base of his spine again.

"I want to scream when I feel it," he ended with a tense smile. "Like an animal. Just howl and howl and howl."

"You should try it sometime," Shizuo said, and Izaya snorted unattractively.

"And turn into you? No thanks."

Shizuo hummed in approval, his hands stroking over the back of Izaya's neck slowly. "Look at us both," he replied quietly. "We were always hurting people and always hurting each other. But now I hardly get violent at anyone, and you're not even working anymore." Izaya shifted his head to look up at him; Shizuo's eyes were turned downward, gold in the sunlight. Freckled with black. "Even monsters can change, Izaya."

"It's too late for some of them," Izaya murmured.

"It's too late for the people we've already hurt. It's not too late for the ones we haven't."

Izaya straightened from his slouch. When he raised his head his mouth brushed against Shizuo's chin. "Maybe that's true for you, Shizu-chan. You hate hurting people. Keep working at it and you'll turn into a real boy one day."

"What's that from, Pinocchio?" Shizuo mocked.

"I'm surprised you even know that."

"I used to imagine your nose growing every time you lied," and he laughed, then, when Izaya frowned in distaste. "I pictured you coming to school with a goddamn fishing pole stuck on your face."

"Fantasized about me during class, did you?"

"For sure," Shizuo said. Izaya's smile faded at once. "I was too confused to realize what it was, though. You were cute, and you were an asshole, and I didn't know how to deal with those two things at the same time."

"A dilemma you must've solved early enough," Izaya completed.

Shizuo looked at him with kindness. "Let's not go there, yeah?" His thumb pressed behind Izaya's ear. "Maybe one day you'll tell me your side of the story, and we can sort it all out then."

_I love you_ , Izaya thought, and when Shizuo leaned down to kiss him he dragged his teeth on the other's bottom lip until he could taste blood.

Shizuo opened his mouth to welcome it, to lick into the part of Izaya's lips avidly, sun-hot and vibrant. He always looked more solid, more real than others whenever he was nearby; but it was only like this, with their bodies pressed as close together as they could with Izaya's belly in the way, that he _felt_ real. Izaya sneaked his hands up Shizuo's back, tugging his shirt free of his pants to press directly to scalding skin stretching over hard muscles and harder bones. Shizuo was a thin man, skinny even around the joints of his limbs, but Izaya could see and feel the promise of immeasurable strength inside, and when he fit his hand between Shizuo's shoulder blades and touched the shift of his back on tension and want, he felt fire shoot through him.

"Take me to bed," he ordered in a gasp. "Shizuo, if you don't fuck me now I'll—"

"Yeah," Shizuo cut in, but he was speaking against Izaya's mouth as if he needed it to be able to breathe, "yeah, let's get out of here."

They stumbled out into the hallway without really letting go of each other. Izaya was clawing at Shizuo's back, and one Shizuo's hands was fisted into the collar of Izaya's T-shirt as if he was barely restraining himself from tearing it off his body altogether. Izaya wouldn't have minded. He hated the damn maternity clothes.

Shizuo took a second to delicately close the door to the nursery behind them. He watched the grey door with solemn eyes, and then turned back to Izaya with pupils blown wide enough to hide the brown of his irises. He tugged Izaya closer by the collar, until he could fit their mouths together again, more slowly.

"What will you do?" he breathed against Izaya's lips. Then he kissed his chin, and stroked his thumb to the hollow of Izaya's neck before licking down the same way, and Izaya took a few seconds to understand he had spoken at all.

"What?" he said. He scratched along Shizuo's spine when Shizuo bit lightly under his chin.

Shizuo chuckled against his neck. "What will you do, if I don't fuck you right now?"

"Potentially die," Izaya drawled, but it fell flat, what with Shizuo's other hand finally letting go of his arm to slide under the elastic waist of Izaya's pants all the way to his ass. "More likely make you regret it later in extremely creative ways."

"Don't tempt me," Shizuo growled, and then they finally moved to the bedroom door. It stood open a way from them, like a promise.

Izaya got rid of his clothes as soon as he stepped inside. With how often they had been here there was no time wasted to Shizuo looking around the place, but when he turned back to face him Izaya found that there was much else for Shizuo to wonder at.

His eyes ran down the length of Izaya's body with care, taking in the changes the pregnancy had made in him. The red marks under his belly and to the side of his breasts, the parts where skin sagged and where it stood taught and aching; the excess weight at his hips and his thighs and his ass if he bothered to look, but Shizuo wasn't looking anymore already. He was meeting Izaya's eyes with softness and worry and desire in his, and disgust or reject nowhere to be found.

"Stop being so damn emotional on me," Izaya said lowly. He took Shizuo's hand and pulled him along toward the bed.

"I can't," Shizuo replied behind him. "I can't believe I finally have you."

Izaya felt his eyes burn. He inhaled shakily before pushing Shizuo down on the bed and tugging down the other's pants and underwear until they fell around his ankles uselessly.

He sat atop Shizuo's hips, and wrapped his hand around Shizuo's neck. The heel of his hand pressed against where Shizuo's pulse was beating steadily. "If I tell you I love you, will you shut up about it?"

Shizuo looked stricken. His heart throbbed under Izaya's hand.

Izaya smiled and leaned down over him until their lips touched again. "I love you," he breathed, so that the words felt like touches instead of sounds. "I love you so much I could destroy anything you ask me to. I could make it all crumble to dust." He kissed Shizuo's lips. They opened sweetly for him, with the barest of nudges. "If you knew how much I love you, Shizuo, you would run so very far away from me," he whispered.

"Izaya," Shizuo said, but Izaya put a hand on his mouth.

"There's time for you to learn all about the mistake you made in loving me back," Izaya replied gently. "I'm a hurricane, Shizu-chan. Everything I touch suffers irreparable damage."

Shizuo didn't say anything in answer. He turned his head slightly, though, just enough to press a kiss to the center of Izaya's palm, and when he blinked his eyes open again it was to stare back at him with a challenge in them.

Izaya's chest collapsed in on hope.

He bit at Shizuo's lips when he leaned down again, and then he moaned, because there was a hand running up the inside of his thigh and pressing wetly against his sex, long fingers rubbing delicately over the folds and making long slow waves of heat run up his spine. Izaya threw an arm behind him and grabbed blindly at Shizuo's cock, satisfied to feel the hitch in his breath under him at the contact.

"Do you feel like a getting to the main amusement now and keeping the foreplay for a second round?" Izaya gasped, and Shizuo shuddered as he slicked his palm down and up again on his shaft.

"Yeah, yes, definitely."

"Good."

There was something to be said about hormones. Izaya more often than not required additional lube during sex, alongside slower minutes spent stretching him to comfort instead of pain starting six months into their trysts, once Shizuo had figured out that Izaya's pain-to-pleasure ratio fell in the negatives. But now, as he shifted backwards and braced a hand against Shizuo's cock, Izaya thought he wouldn't need either. He could feel how wet he was, could see it on the shine of Shizuo's fingers resting on the flat of his stomach, and he was burning with need brighter than he had ever felt before. He almost sobbed in disappointment when Shizuo said, "Wait," and he caught himself with a trembling arm on the sheets.

"Do you want to st—"

"No," Shizuo replied softly. "I just—please, I want to hold you."

Izaya looked at him, not knowing whether shock or embarrassment translated through the slackness of his expression. Either way, he ended up nodding his assent and falling to the side of the bed, turning his back to the room so Shizuo could fit himself behind him and push his knee between Izaya's thighs. Izaya groaned harshly when it rubbed at the crux of his legs, when Shizuo slid an arm between the almost-gone dip of his waist and the mattress to brace the span of his belly, the other sneaking over his hip to press two fingers into him slowly.

"I don't need this," Izaya exhaled. "Please—"

"I don't want to hurt you," Shizuo said against his nape. He kissed it, then, as if to soothe the unsatisfying stretch of his fingers and the rushes of hot blood shaking Izaya's body every time a thumb brushed his clit. "You're so fucking wet," he added after a pause.

"I _know_. Just put it in already."

But he didn't, not for another few minutes, not until he could move three fingers into Izaya with ease. When he took them out at last they left a wet trail over Izaya's thigh, shiny in the daylight, and then, finally, Shizuo hunched behind him and pushed forward with his hips.

"Fuck," he breathed against Izaya's hair, and Izaya almost laughed, almost said, _Indeed_ , would have if not for the sharp pain of his second thrust. "Not so deep," he said tightly, and Shizuo slowed down in sync, lips pressing against the base of Izaya's skull and breath stroking shivers over the thin skin there.

"God," Izaya moaned. "That feels—"

He only heard Shizuo's hum in answer, only felt the flex of his arms around him before he moved again and Izaya lost his ability to speak.

It was so easy to lose himself into the slow rocking of Shizuo's hips, to let the heat of the day wash over them almost unfelt for the raw scorch of nakedness and pleasure licking along his back and the core of his body in tandem. Shizuo braced his belly against the movement and pushed into him with the same carefulness, even as he breathed and mouthed against the damp skin of his nape something that felt like swears, something that felt like love; and throughout it all Izaya could only fist a hand into the bedspread, and link his other fingers with Shizuo's over his thigh, and try to breathe.

It felt and it didn't feel like the last time they had done this. Like every other time they had done this. Izaya wasn't flat on his back on the floor of his living room, and his shoulders only suffered the pressure of cloth rather than the burn and bruises of hard ground, but Shizuo handled his body with the same care he had in the midst of winter chill; and when he moaned against Izaya's skin and bit more harshly into his shoulder it felt the same, his hips pushing one last time, off the bed and directly into him, rippling orgasm through them both and pulsing heat inside Izaya where he would feel it for days.

Izaya sucked in a breath as if he had just come out from underwater. For a moment they stayed suspended in time, bodies aching with leftover tension before shaky weakness came and forced Shizuo to pull out, to let his hips fall back onto the bed and Izaya fall back onto him, heavy and satisfied.

Shizuo's arm beneath him started feeling uncomfortable after a short while, but Izaya didn't move. He stared at his ceiling with unblinking eyes and waited for the low warm tugs inside him to stop.

Shizuo did move, though. He extracted his arm from where it was crushed between the bed and Izaya's back and moved onto his stomach instead, bringing his other hand to rest atop Izaya's collarbones.

"We should take a shower," he said lowly.

Izaya chuckled. There was another jab of heat inside him, more aching than pleasurable. "I know I talked about round two, but I'm gonna need some more time to recover before that happens, Shizu-chan."

Shizuo pinched him in answer. "I meant an actual shower. With showering involved. Round two can happen tomorrow." Izaya turned his head to look at him, and Shizuo amended, "If you'll let me stay, of course."

"Stop this," Izaya said, and then he winced, because his belly was starting to truly ache. He breathed in slowly. "You can stay. You can stay for as long as you want unless I explicitly tell you to get out."

"I'll wait for that, then." He fell back onto the bed, head near Izaya's shoulder and yellow hair tickling softly against his upper arm.

Izaya stayed as still as he could, waiting for the throbbing inside him to alleviate and sweat to turn to salt on his skin.

"Shizu-chan," he said slowly after a few minutes had passed and his belly constricted again painfully. "I think there's something wrong."

Shizuo pushed himself up with his forearms to look at him. "What?"

"I think you need to call Shinra," Izaya smiled tightly. He pressed a hand above his pelvis right as it cramped, familiar and terrifying at once.

 

* * *

 

Shinra came over within twenty minutes. He examined Izaya. And then he laughed at them until his glasses slid down his nose and tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

"I can't believe you called me over _post-coital cramps_ ," he sobbed out at Shizuo's crimson face, which he was trying to hide behind his hand.

"Shut the fuck up," Shizuo replied half-heartedly. "How the fuck was I supposed to know? He said there was something wrong."

"Oh, this is one for the family reunions," Shinra said happily as he took off his gloves. "I'm never going to pass up on the occasion to talk about it."

Izaya stayed where he was, too low on energy both mental and physical to put up much of a fight against Shinra's laughter. The world appeared to him behind a pale veil of relief so immense it pumped him of all his ability to care for something other than the fact that he wasn't giving birth yet.

"Just go home," he said tiredly. "I'll pay you to shut up myself if I have to."

"You don't have enough money to buy my silence, Orihara-kun."

Izaya flipped him off.

Shinra snorted loudly, and then he strolled out of the apartment and to the hallway outside where Celty was probably waiting for him. He paused at the entrance, one hand holding the door open.

"Joking aside," he announced more loudly. "If this happens _outside_ of you two fornicating, you should immediately go to the hospital."

"I know," Izaya answered with a frown. "I think I've memorized your 'warning signs' pamphlet by now, Shinra."

"Good. One thing you know that's actually of use to anyone."

He waved at them merrily before stepping out and letting the door close behind him. Shizuo rubbed his face one last time in the vague hope of erasing his furious blush.

"Fucking Shinra," he mumbled.

"I certainly hope not," Izaya said lightly.

Shizuo shuddered. " _God_. Let's just stop talking about Shinra. And about fucking." He sat down on the other couch, and put a hand at the crown of Izaya's head hanging over the arm. "How do you feel?"

"It doesn't hurt anymore."

"That's not what I asked." He didn't insist, though, only tread his fingers through Izaya's damp hair and rubbed against his scalp.

With the overwhelming reassurance that nothing was wrong it was all too easy for Izaya to doze off to the tingles running along his neck every time Shizuo's blunt nails scratched against him lightly. He was almost all the way into sleep when Shizuo spoke again, and then he had to take a few seconds to come back awake and blink his eyesight into some sort of focus.

He craned his neck to look behind him. "What did you say?"

Shizuo smiled briefly. "Sorry. I said we should start thinking about names. For the baby."

Izaya's heart tried an awkward little misstep inside his chest, but he felt too drowsy and unreal to pay it much mind. He fell back against the couch. "Oh. Just name it whatever you want."

"You don't want to have a say in this at all?"

"I've had way too much say about way too many things regarding this," Izaya replied with a vague hand gesture. "And I'm terrible at making up names anyway."

There was a short silence.

"Izaya is a good name," Shizuo said thoughtfully. "A bit pompous and irrational."

Izaya closed his eyes, and his lips quivered. "Fitting in every way," he answered with pride.

 

* * *

 

_twenty-eighth_

Celty texted Izaya as August rolled in, stifling and unbreathable. Though it was late in the night he hadn't had a lick of sleep, had spent hours atop the bed covers with his phone open on emails he wasn't reading and one hand holding his swollen right ankle above his left knee. Shizuo had been asleep for ages. His hand rested by Izaya's shoulder, palm up and fingers curled vulnerably in his slumber. The heat had won over even his tendency to kick around in his dreams; he was still as a rock, in the same exact position he had fallen hours before. Only Izaya had moved aside and away from the weight of his arm above him in the hope of a cooler spot.

He watched the notification light up dazedly. When he slid the message open his thumb left a sweaty trail on the screen of his phone.

_Shinra asked me to check if you were sleeping well_ , it said. No punctuation and no flourishes.

She had always been rather achingly straightforward, when she wasn't acting like she was better than all of them.

_I am_ , he replied.

_If you were you wouldn't be texting back at 2:30am_ , she sent back, and he felt irritation crawl up his spine in immediate response. He blocked her number.

His back throbbed when he curled over to his side to put the phone on the table next to him. Nowadays there wasn't a moment where he wasn't in some kind of physical pain—and now he was having trouble standing up for too long or even wearing shoes for extended periods of time, and his lower back screamed if he ever stood still instead of walked for more than a minute. He ached like a giant sore, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Another of his phones rang inside the drawer of his bedside table, and he jumped.

"You have to be kidding me," he growled. He took a breath and pushed himself to a sitting position before opening the drawer and touching blindly for the source of the incessant buzzing. When he found the responsible one, a green slide phone so old some of the keys had been smoothed and erased, he put it to his ear immediately. Next to him Shizuo let out a louder breath. "Can't you take a hint already?" Izaya hissed into the receiver.

He heard the soft taping of fingers, and then the mechanical voice of a woman, cold as ice: _"I want to talk to you."_

For a second Izaya blanched in surprise; but when he looked at the screen again it was indeed Celty's name, Celty's number. "Are you using some kind of reading-aloud app?"

_"Yes,"_ said the awful voice.

"Just text me," Izaya sighed, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his free hand.

Celty typed something else, for a longer time, and the voice said, _"There's a lower risk of you blocking me while we're calling. And this way you don't get to just listen to the sound of your own voice."_

"My voice is less grating than that thing," he replied.

_"Not by much."_

Despite himself he felt the hint of a smile at his mouth. "Fine. Be quick about it."

Typing, again, like soft little footsteps. The voice said, _"Shinra didn't ask me to check up on you. I was worried."_

Izaya lied back down slowly, the pillow under the dip of his back taking away some of the tension.

_"I've been thinking a lot about our last talk."_ It truly was awful, the way the halted speech of the reader took every bit of feeling out of the words it said; Izaya thought hearing the voice of Celty's head might have been less agonizing. _"Actually I can't stop thinking about it."_

"And what is your brilliant conclusion, then?" he asked tiredly. He felt the lack of a headache the same way he would the lack of pain in a still-bleeding wound. As if his body was just too tired to create additional discomfort for him.

_"I'm jealous,"_ the voice said, unfeeling.

All of Izaya's drowsiness evaporated.

He heard her type through the heavy beat of blood in his ears, hurried and stumbling, like the written equivalent of cutting him off before he could even speak. _"Don't take this the wrong way."_

"How am I supposed to take it?" Izaya said. There was rage like liquor on his tongue, sweet and heady and nauseating. "What exactly are you jealous of, here? Do you have any idea what you're even talking about?" This time he heard a louder noise, like flesh hitting hollow wood.

_"Shinra and I can't have children,"_ the voice replied. It lingered, off, on the wrong words; in the end it sounded like boredom more than anything else. _"Even if we managed to adopt despite me being an immortal creature with no legal ID, I wouldn't want them."_

"Because Shinra doesn't have the ability to care for anyone?"

_"Because I'm immortal,"_ Celty answered.

Izaya closed his mouth.

_"It's going to be hard enough outliving him, and Shizuo, and everyone else I know. I don't want to outlive my own child."_

"You have your head," Izaya said slowly. "You could just kill yourself once they're all gone."

_"You don't understand,"_ the fake voice replied flatly. _"I don't want to live a single second feeling grief over their death."_

A car rushed under his window, moving little dots of light along the corner of his ceiling through the blinds. Celty's fingers tapped softly against the screen of her phone.

_"I'm selfish. I'd rather spare myself pain than risk having happiness."_ Izaya felt his breath catch at her words, but she wasn't done: _"And then you come along, and you're the most undeserving person I've ever met. And you and my best friend are having a child."_

"This isn't a fucking contest," Izaya spat out, eyes shutting as if to parry the rise of anger inside him, hot and venomous.

_"I know,"_ Celty replied, monotone. _"I'm sorry."_

"Don't apologize to me."

_"I'm not. I'm sorry for myself, for stooping so low as to feel jealous of someone like you."_

Shizuo's hand moved on the bedspread, crawling to Izaya's shoulder and then resting above his chest. Izaya turned his head and watched him blink slumber out of his eyes and relaxation out of the turn of his mouth.

_"You don't deserve him,"_ she said robotically, like an echo of his own thoughts.

"You don't deserve Shinra," he replied.

Shizuo winced, but didn't move otherwise. Izaya put his free hand into blond hair, treading his fingers through the messy strands and scratching lightly against Shizuo's scalp. Celty's end of the line stayed silent for so long he wondered if she had decided to cut the whole thing short herself.

_"I do want to be your friend, Izaya,"_ she said at last. _"I went about it the wrong way before, but that's still true."_

Izaya fisted his hand into Shizuo's hair. "I'm glad we agree on this."

_"I also expect an apology for my head."_

"Which of you should I deliver it to?"

He heard her shift in her seat, and he could almost see her shoulders hunch on laughter and exasperation alike in the dark of her home. Her body covered in shadow, intangible and solid and weightless all at once. She blended in the night so very easily, she might as well be made of night itself.

Shizuo's thumb pressed against his neck. When Izaya looked at him again, he was smiling.

 

* * *

 

_thirty-second_

"We're taking you shopping," Mairu announced during her and Kururi's now biweekly visit at Izaya's apartment.

"The last time you took me shopping ended with a store closing for good," Izaya muttered into his breakfast. He sat straighter in his chair to make way for Kururi's hands sliding over his belly; she made a face at the absence of movement, but Izaya wasn't complaining. The fetus had been blissfully still all day long.

"I can't believe her room is still empty. You haven't even bought a crib. A _crib_ , Iza-nii."

"It can sleep on the couch."

"You monster," she gasped dramatically.

Izaya put down his chopsticks and stood up. "At least let me take a shower," he told her, and then he raised a warning hand when her face lit up in joy. "And if I start feeling tired I'm going home immediately."

"Don't worry!" she said brightly. "Shizuo-san will join us at the mall. He'll carry you if you get too tired to walk."

"He's nice," Kururi added.

"I don't even want to know how you managed to get his number," he muttered.

It took him longer than usual to drag himself up the stairs. While standing under the spray of the shower head he had to brace one hand against the wall and another under the weight of his belly, as if it could ever lighten the pressure in his pelvis. In the end he barely washed himself at all.

Izaya put on the loose-fitting maternity clothes with distaste, and when he couldn't delay any longer, he followed his sisters outside.

He didn't like being out at all anymore. He had long since given up pretending he wasn't pregnant, but now he was _heavily_ pregnant; the swell of his body was unmistakable as any other kind of weight gain, and if it wasn't how it stretched into the elastic band of his pants or the way his breasts lay heavy and visible below his throat then it was the way he walked, and the arch of his back, that made people stare.

Having Shizuo by his side once they stepped out of the cab made little difference. Salespeople surrounded them as soon as they set foot anywhere, and in their glassy eyes Izaya could see himself as they thought he was.

He had to sit down right after they chose a crib. There were still the mattress and sheets to buy, and clothes, and toys, else Mairu and Kururi would never be satisfied.

"You can go home," Shizuo said lowly above him. "I can take care of the rest myself. I'll treat your sisters to ice cream or something so they leave you alone for today."

"I don't need you to bribe them for me," Izaya replied tiredly.

"I actually like spending time with your sisters."

Izaya made a face. "You're unbelievable," he said, and Shizuo laughed.

His pelvis throbbed briefly. He put a hand there by reflex.

"I told my parents," Shizuo said after a brief silence. "And Kasuka."

Izaya looked up; but Shizuo wasn't looking at him, was watching far into the aisle of baby things instead, over rows of colorful blankets and cushions and their bright-orange price tags.

"I don't mind," he replied. "I wasn't expecting you to keep this secret from your own family."

He saw Shizuo's shoulder sag ever-so-slightly in answer, and he caught himself before he could smile.

"They want to meet you," Shizuo continued.

Izaya's belly ached again. "I see."

"They already know you, sort of," and his eyes only betrayed fondness when they met Izaya's, sweet and clear under the store's glaring lights. "Because I talked about you so much in high school."

There was dryness now in Izaya's throat, and a knot-like obstruction when he tried to breathe. "Do they know me as—"

"I've only ever known you as Izaya," Shizuo cut in. "And I don't think they understood when I tried to explain, not completely. But they won't mind. They don't mind, Izaya. It's okay."

Izaya took a deep breath. "Well," he rasped. "That's one issue out of the way, then, and about a hundred more to go."

Shizuo laughed again, lively and loud, so ill-fitting against the ordinary splattered all around them for sale.

Izaya tried to push himself to his feet; and then he fell back down, because his belly cramped again wildly.

"You all right?" Shizuo asked.

"I'm good," he let out, as steadily as he could.

He waited for a moment. The pain lingered but didn't flare again, and when he stood up slowly nothing else seemed forthcoming. He nodded curtly at Shizuo to walk ahead into the clothing area of the store.

Ten minutes later, his water broke.

Izaya stood still and horrified as liquid gushed down his legs, sticking the seam of his pants to his skin and then dripping to the floor, and he barely felt the contraction this time for the sheer nausea running up his throat and beating against his palate and his lips.

"Shizuo," he heaved.

He was too far away to be heard. Shizuo was a too far ahead, with an employee talking to him and Kururi stuck to his side, but somehow he must've known, or maybe it was coincidence alone that made him look back at Izaya trembling on his legs in the middle of the aisle. He pushed the salesman aside with too much strength; all Izaya could do was watch the stranger fall into a wall of newborn-sized onesies and take the entire shelf along with him, and then Shizuo was here.

"It's too soon," Izaya told him helplessly.

"Come on," Shizuo replied in a tight voice, hands bracing against Izaya's shoulder to push him forward.

"I can't." He inhaled, and it sounded like a sob. "It hasn't been long enough. I can't—"

" _Izaya_." Shizuo's face was pale, creased on worry and panic, and his hand shook against Izaya's skin even as he tried to hide it. "We need to get you to the clinic. Please, you need to move."

So Izaya did. He unstuck his feet from the wet floor and tried to ignore how the sound of it made him want to retch, he dug his fingernails into Shizuo's hand so hard he drew blood, he walked out of the store as his belly tightened with every step like an echo.

The ambulance only took five minutes to arrive. To Izaya they sped by like a second. He hadn't even noticed Mairu calling it and he barely felt the foreign hands lying him down on the bed inside. Shizuo climbed next to him and grabbed his hand again, and when he squeezed it carefully Izaya thought this might be the only thing that was real at all.

The nurse wiped his legs of the fluids with towels, and though he saw them come out stained with pink it wasn't until Shizuo drew in a shuddering breath that he realized he was bleeding. "It's too soon," Izaya said again, wind-soft.

"How far along are you?" the man asked.

And Izaya tried to think back to the careful count he had kept of every day and every week and every month, but he couldn't. He only knew that it wasn't time. Shizuo squeezed his hand and said, "Thirty-two weeks and four days," his voice rough as sandpaper.

"You'll be fine," the man replied kindly. He looked grey. Almost transparent. Like the blocky shapes of the ultrasound.

Inside the clinic he was directed to the machine itself again, with a different doctor this time, a man with grey hair and thin eyes and hands made rough from practice. Izaya didn't look at the monitor at all. Shizuo didn't either.

The doctor talked a lot. About not stopping the labor, about epidurals and caesareans and health risks and pain factors. Izaya watched him for a while before he had enough.

"Yes to the epidural, no to the c-section," he said. "I don't care about the rest." He thought the man must look unhappy, but it was hard to tell with how greyed out the world looked next to Shizuo's lopsided smile in the corner of his vision.

They injected him in the ache of his back, and though the awful pressure inside him didn't slacken at least the pain faded to less. To forgettable.

Izaya was more than familiar with out-of-body experiences. If he bothered to look back on the last seven months he knew they felt, as a whole, as if he hadn't quite been himself, or in control of himself. The heavy dissociation between his body's state and who he was had kept him in a state of hazy time skips, more like he was watching things happen rather than living them to the full. But he couldn't think of a situation more stark than that of intimately knowing pain was crushing him without his feeling it—only the results of it, only the flex of muscles he hadn't known he possessed at all and the sweat drenching him as he drowsed in and out of consciousness. As he bled. He watched Shizuo go out and come back in scrubs as through a camera's lens that was only able to focus on the brown of his eyes above the blue mask he wore. His sisters had their faces pressed to the window giving onto the corridor, and the glass was misty around their mouths, and their fingertips left little white trails everywhere they touched. Nurses went and were replaced by midwives. Izaya was changed from his clothes to a blue gown, and through it all chemicals blunted his touch and gapped over the hole stress was digging in him, more terrifying than anything he had ever felt.

"Mom texted me. She says she'll be praying for you, and that you need to breathe," Shizuo murmured next to him, three hours into their wait.

"Does she have more enlightening advice to give me?" Izaya slurred, too late, too slow. His hand was clammy. Shizuo never let go of it.

"Just breathe," Shizuo said again. "It'll pass. Everything's gonna be all right."

He pressed his forehead to Izaya's overheated one, and Izaya could've damned the mask and the whole world for a hint of the same kind of certainty.

"I'm doing this for you," he said breezily. "All of it. You're the only reason I'm going through with this."

Shizuo's eyes shone. "I know."

"I've never wanted kids. I don't know what I'm doing."

"I know."

Izaya's throat closed on a sob, and he ripped his damp hand from Shizuo's grip only to grab at the collar of his scrubs instead. "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing," he rasped out. "I saw the opportunity and and I took it because I can't fucking stop myself, and even when this is over I'm going to ruin it all, I'm never going to be able to go back—" he stopped, because he not-ached again, belly contracting and muscles tensing and sweat dripping without any real pain to go with it expect for a low thrum around his middle.

Shizuo crushed Izaya's head against his shoulder and ran a hand into his wet hair. "It's okay. It's fine."

"It's not," Izaya said, damp on his skin. The hand at the back of his head pressed harder against him.

"We'll figure it out."

Izaya laughed. Every poisonous cell of his body shook with it.

Eventually the contractions turned into sharper pain than the dull throb of his body, and when he started moaning from it Shizuo called the doctor in.

It wasn't a quick affair. Minutes turned to hours and still he pushed, and all that seemed to come out was more blood than he thought he could have, warm on his thighs and sticky on the sanitized sheets spread beneath him where it mixed with sweat and whatever was left of amniotic fluids. It was a vain effort, as unrewarding as it was vital.

When the head appeared Izaya could've cried if all of his energy wasn't directed at getting it out, Shizuo's hand still crushed in his as if he could draw the inhuman strength out of it to finish the job for him. But he couldn't. So he breathed, and he didn't weep, and he dug inside himself for every crumb of will he could find.

He never stopped panting when the man hunched between his legs pulled the baby out of him. "A girl," the doctor announced, and waited, and waited.

And waited.

"She's not crying," Izaya said.

Shizuo didn't answer. One of the midwives took something from the doctor's hands, turned her back on Izaya and hunched over a table in silence, hands busy in front of her.

"She's not," Izaya said. "Oh, God." He tried to shake his hand out of Shizuo's but Shizuo didn't let him, linked his fingers around the span of Izaya's wrist instead to keep him in place. "Oh my _God_."

The doctor came to look at what the midwife was doing, and though he was whispering Izaya caught _No response_ from his lips and felt his entire body open as if to scream.

"What did I do wrong," he panted. "What did I do—" and then he choked, face turned as far away from Shizuo's as he could and rubbing into rough sheets as if the burn could make him feel alive again. "Please," he sobbed into the fabric. "Please, cry."

She did. She wailed high and strident and wonderful, a howl that shot through Izaya like an arrow and seared him to life as if he was the one taking his first breath. Time crystallized into infinity, settled into sharp-edged relief, and cut into him with every sobbing breath he took, until no one in the room could've told who was crying louder between him and the newborn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much the end of this story. A short(er) epilogue will be coming within the week. Feedback is immensely appreciated as always. (Please.)


	5. Epilogue

**Aches Like Nothing  
** **Epilogue**

_only_

His mother fell in love the moment she laid eyes on the transparent crib of the intensive care unit. She braced herself on the railing outside the window and stuck her forehead to the cold glass, and when she breathed out, " _Oh_ ," Shizuo felt it glow warm in his heart.

"Oh, Shizuo," she said. "She's _beautiful_."

Kasuka stepped to stand next to her and look inside as well, face completely unreadable. Shizuo himself didn't need to—he had stood there too many times already, for too many hours, hands growing damp on the railing and eyes stuck to every move she made under her white blanket. Sometimes he thought he could hear the beeping of her heart monitor through the wall separating them, every beat unmaking him again.

"She's small," Kasuka said after a while. "Even for a baby."

"Yeah," Shizuo replied. He cleared his throat. "Yeah, she, she came out way earlier than expected."

"That must've been terrifying," his mom deplored.

It had. But Shizuo didn't think he would ever be able to translate into words the sight of Izaya breaking down in rage and fear or the endless minute of expectation as their daughter fought for her first breath.

"She's fine, now," he said, eyes irresistibly dragged to her little face relaxed on sleep and the shiny trail of drool around the tube going into her mouth. "They're feeding her and helping her breathe. The doctors said she'll probably have asthma all her life, though."

His mother looked at him kindly. "Take this as incentive to stop smoking, then," she admonished, familiar and light-hearted.

And Shizuo felt his face warm as he admitted, "I already have."

He had given every pack he owned to Tom the day Izaya said he would go through with the pregnancy. The following day he had bought some again, a night spent awake and jittery enough to make his will crumble; but Celty had helped him reduce his consumption week after week, and he hadn't touched the pack of American Spirits bent into the pocket of his jacket at Izaya's home since they had slept together last.

His mom pressed a thin hand against his forearm, squeezing briefly. "I'm proud of you," she said, voice heavy with emotion. "And I can't wait until the little one is out of the hospital and we can greet her properly."

Shizuo glanced at the white bundle in the clear plexiglass box. "Me too," he replied softly.

"Is Orihara-san up for visits?" Kasuka asked.

Shizuo hesitated.

"We can come back," their mom immediately added. "If he's too tired to—"

"No, he's awake," Shizuo cut in. "His grandmother is with him now."

"She's the one you two named her after, right?" she asked, and her face was kinder now. Shizuo nodded. Her thumb stroked the skin of his arm softly. "We'll come back tomorrow, or the day after, or whenever Orihara-kun feels well enough to see us. God knows I've been through the process of sitting through endless family visits while literally bleeding my guts out."

Kasuka gave a very, very faint disgusted twitch of the lips. From the end of the corridor a nurse was looking at him in wonder.

Shizuo walked them out of the hospital and all the way to the parking lot. Kasuka's sleek car had gathered a crowd of onlookers and tabloid reporters already, although thankfully none of them seemed willing to try and deface it.

"Who did you visit, Yuuhei-san?" a man howled as soon as they were within shouting distance of him. Shizuo felt irritation lick up his spine and growl low in his throat, but his mom beat him to it.

"Can't a man spend time with his family in peace?" she yelled as loud as the journalist had.

"She's going to rip him a new one," Kasuka commented idly, over the sound of the shouting match starting in front of them. Then he turned to Shizuo and said, "I was thinking of buying my niece a cat."

"She's two days old, you can't fucking buy her a _cat_."

Kasuka nodded. "I understand. The cat can wait for later."

Shizuo rubbed a hand over his face, and his skin tingled softly, exhaustion tearing a yawn out of him before he could help it. "Just buy her a cat plushie or something," he groaned. "Not like she's gonna be able to tell the difference for a few years."

Their mother was all the way to the car now, two feet away from the shouting man and hands raised as if to grab the lapels of his coat and shake him.

"I should probably stop her," he said slowly.

"Let her have at it for a moment," Kasuka replied. "She's been restless."

 

* * *

 

Izaya and his grandmother both stopped speaking when Shizuo set foot inside the hospital room again. Izaya only glanced at him shortly before looking back to her, but Orihara Natsu stared at him long and hard until he was seated on the other side of Izaya's bed.

"As I was saying," she started slowly, eyes never leaving Shizuo's. "I went to see my great-granddaughter earlier, and you lot come out scrawnier with every generation."

"She's perfect," Izaya replied in a dry voice.

"That's what your mother's mother probably said when she birthed that harpy," Natsu commented uncaringly.

Izaya choked on his breath, lips fluttering into a smile. He grimaced immediately after and pressed a hand against his belly. Natsu scoffed at him. "Look at you, flailing around for this," she said, patting her own stomach in demonstration. She had a soft voice, slow on the words, as if she had to repeat them several times in her head to make sense of their order. They slurred with each other when she spoke. "They didn't inject _me_ with a miracle painkiller when I had your dad."

"It's a wonder you made it out alive," Izaya smiled tightly. His face was paler now than it had been before Shizuo left, and his brow shone with sweat in the light. Shizuo took his hand and rubbed over the skin of his knuckles, mapping out each joint and bone.

"You okay?" he asked.

"You mean besides the fact that I'm wearing adult diapers?" Izaya drawled. "I'm spectacular, Shizu-chan."

That wasn't what he meant. But if Izaya hadn't realized that over the course of the past few months then he wouldn't while he was hurting like this, so Shizuo squeezed his hand and didn't ask again.

When he looked up Natsu was smiling at him.

She grabbed her cane as she stood, leaning heavily on it to her left side. "Well I'll be gone, then," she said. "I'll be back tomorrow to thoroughly take advantage of your state and make you actually wear the clothes I knit you."

Izaya groaned. "I don't want them."

"I know you don't. But how are you going to stop me like this, I wonder?" She nodded at Shizuo. "You take care of my grandson, Heiwajima."

"Yes ma'am," Shizuo replied.

"Don't be so pathetic," Izaya snarled softly. "She's all bark and no bite."

Natsu laughed low in her throat and patted him on the cheek. " _You_ take care of yourself, Izaya. And of my namesake too." She limped out of the room, waving off Shizuo's silent offer to help her walk. The door slid close behind her with a very soft _thump_.

Izaya sagged against the pillows keeping him upright. Then he let go of Shizuo's hand to grab the collar of his shirt instead, and Shizuo let him tug him down into a kiss with his lips already parted.

Izaya tasted like salt, like the cold sweat he couldn't yet shower off as often as he wanted to, but he was warm and slow and giving even with weakness in his body and soreness in each of his muscles. When they parted he sighed against Shizuo's lips. Shizuo had to restrain himself from kissing him again.

"How is she?" Izaya asked, leaning back against the pillows. His hand stayed on Shizuo's torso, fingers hooked into the breast pocket of his vest.

"She's good," he answered. "Coughing a little. But she's breathing fine with the machine."

"I heard your brother came by." Shizuo shot a quick glance to the phone on Izaya's nightstand, and Izaya chuckled. "A nurse came in and told us while you were with him. I'm not actually all-seeing, Shizu-chan."

Shizuo cleared his throat, face warm. "Yeah, he was here. My mom too."

Izaya didn't say anything. Shizuo knew neither he nor his sisters had called any family besides their grandmother, who had traveled all the way to Tokyo in less than a day to visit. There were two cards on the beside table, though, arrived this morning with Izaya's breakfast and still rigid with lack of handling. One of them Izaya had told him was from his secretary, the strict-looking woman he had crossed paths with on occasion. The other had no signature.

"From a regular client," he had said after putting it down, "who should not have the knowledge to send it in the first place." But he hadn't seemed unhappy about it.

Now he looked paler with fatigue as the afternoon drained by, white in the face even against the sheets of his bed and the light from outside bathing his half of the room. His hair was damp with sweat and there were bags the color of bruises under his eyes.

He shifted against his backrest. "Will you take me to see her?" he asked carefully.

Shizuo's breath caught in his chest.

He helped Izaya into the wheelchair on the other side of the room, eyes fixed onto his face for every wince of pain. When he pushed him outside a nurse gave them an encouraging look, glancing at the plastic bracelet Izaya wore. Izaya shoved his hand under his thigh in reply.

He didn't stop in front of the window this time but wheeled Izaya all the way to the automatic door at the entrance of the ward where a nurse was standing guard. The man helped Izaya put on blue scrubs and a blue mask while Shizuo was changing as well, and gave an apologetic look at the chair they had to leave behind. Shizuo sneaked an arm around Izaya's back to help him wobble the rest of the way.

Shizuo may have come here several times already, but Izaya hadn't. And he knew what they were thinking, he knew the look on the face of the therapist they had sent in when Izaya woke up the first day and refused to go to the ward Natsu was in, knew the shape of the pills Izaya had been offered and had refused to take as if he had seen them before.

They didn't know what he knew, though, and what he knew was this: that although Izaya hadn't gone to see her, he asked about her every time Shizuo did. That he bore with the pain, with the doctors and the nurses who wrote the wrong name on a piece of plastic and put it around his wrist like a tag on an animal. That Izaya taking two days to regroup after seven months of chaos was the healthiest he had ever seen him react to something.

Izaya braced himself on the table the box was resting on. Shizuo looked at Natsu's face as she blinked under the soft light of the ward and wiggled her legs slowly.

"She really is scrawny," Izaya said after a while. He tapped against the glass with a finger. Natsu blinked.

Shizuo breathed in and said, "You can hold her. If you want."

"I thought she couldn't be outside of that thing for now?"

"You can put your arms through there," the nurse pointed to the opposite side of the box where gloves were attached to two holes in the surface. "It won't feel the same as really holding her, but you can touch her."

Izaya looked unseeingly at the box. "Have you done it?" he asked, turning to Shizuo. Shizuo shook his head.

"No. I wanted to do it with you."

It had been an evidence to him, and he said it lightly, as such; but Izaya breathed as if he was only now remembering he could breathe at all, and for the first time in days blood colored his face to something that looked alive.

He let himself be dragged to the other side of the table, and neither of them listened to the explanations the nurse was giving them now about the machine's different aspects.

Shizuo put one hand into the hole near Natsu's head. After a few seconds, Izaya did the same with the one near her legs. Like this they were pressed close together from their ankles to their shoulders, and Shizuo wrapped an arm around Izaya's back to keep him upright at the same time he slid his hand under Natsu's head and lifted it slightly.

He felt the breath Izaya sucked in like a shudder through his entire body. Natsu squirmed atop the blanket she had kicked away some time before, eyes opening and closing as if it could help her vision sharpen to something human-like. Her skull didn't even completely fit his palm.

"I can't touch her," Izaya said hollowly.

"You can," Shizuo replied. "Look, I'm doing it."

Izaya shook his head. Shizuo lowered Natsu's head back again and slid his hand from under it slowly, until it rested against the soft of the mattress again. He brushed blindly against the wall of the box until his fingers found Izaya's.

"Just her foot," he said softly. "You won't hurt her. Trust me."

Izaya let him guide their hands to Natsu's leg, to the folds of skin hiding her ankle and to the sole of her foot moving jerkily against the sheets. Shizuo pressed Izaya's index finger to the arch of it and felt the entirety of Izaya's body tense in answer against his side.

Natsu didn't react very much. She squirmed some more, and her face scrunched, and in the end Izaya wrapped his fingers around her leg and pressed softly against her heel with his thumb.

Ten years ago Shizuo had been asked by Shinra if he would seriously relish in Izaya dying. He had gotten creative at the time in his answer, spoken poetry of watching Izaya bleed with the single-mindedness of a child's grudge taking away every possibility of nuance. It would be years before Izaya first bit into his lips and his heart at the same time, and years more until he found himself sitting on the floor of Izaya's apartment with Izaya lying down on his side next to him—one hand on Izaya's neck where his pulse beat steady and no thought inside him except for how much he wished this heart would never stop. He had looked at Izaya's back glistening in the dark and remembered each nook of his spine like an echo in his fingers. Inside him only the bright burn of affection shone where resentment had once shivered.

Now Izaya stood pressed against him with pain on his face and in the slouch of his body, and his fingers shook around the ankle of a child they had named after summer; and Shizuo thought if he could send the knowledge of this moment to himself as a child his words of hatred would've turned to words of love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's one very difficult story wrapped up. I hope you enjoyed reading, and here's a reminder that you can chat with me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/izanyas) and [Tumblr](http://izanyas.tumblr.com).


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